Mass Effect

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Audemus and ALOV Team

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Audemus

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About this mod

This mod aims to upscale and remaster all prerendered cutscenes, that by definition no texture mod can fix.

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A Lot Of Videos (ALOV)

This mod aims to improve all of the low resolution, prerendered cutscenes and loading screens all across the Mass Effect Trilogy.

ALOV for ME2
ALOV for ME3
ALOV for LE

What does this mod do?
ALOV is a project inspired by A Lot of Textures (ALOT) by CreeperLava, that remasters all of the prerendered cutscenes in the Mass Effect Trilogy, that cannot be fixed or upgraded with texture/content mods, to 1080p/4K (and in some cases 60fps)

Mass Effect games have 2 types of visuals displayed in them:
  1. Real-time rendered visuals, which consist of things like 3D models, textures, menus etc.
  2. Cutscenes and loading screens that are just video files due to the technical limitations of rendering them in real-time.
In the case of the first, there are many mods that improve them, from texture overhaul mods like ALOT and MEUITM, to bugfix mods like ME1Recalibrated. But since the prerendered cutscenes are just videos - no texture, model, or other graphics mod can fix them.

That's where ALOV comes in. The only way to make them better is to fully substitute them for newer and better prerendered videos. Ones that have higher resolution and higher bitrate, so more details are shown to the player. Originally, this was achieved using Gigapixel AI to upscale each video frame by frame as well as Blender Cycles/After Effects to recreate some of them completely from scratch! For 3.0, we have backported our advanced upscales from Legendary Edition, resulting in a huge jump in quality over 2.0!

The ALOV project has been featured on Eurogamer, IGN, DSOGaming, Overclock3D, DFTG and TheGamer.


How this was done:

Mass Effect + DLC features 56 prerendered Bink videos, weighing together 666MB:
After a few videos (such as the 5 startup/promo videos) were omitted, the remaining videos were either upscaled or fully remastered.

This was our process for the original versions of ALOV. For info on how 3.0 was created, check out the ALOV for LE mod page
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Delivery
Once the videos were complete they were exported as a lossless Quicktime video, then converted to 4K / 1080p, BIK files using RAD Tools.

These original BIKs had a resolution of 720p with an average bitrate of 1.4 Mbit/s
The upscaled videos have a bitrate of about 3.4 Mbit/s (1080p) and 9 Mbit/s (4K).


Compatibility:
ALOV for ME1 is fully compatible with all mods. No Intro Videos is obsolete and unnecessary, as it's included in this mod already.

ME1 Recalibrated
contains a single video file (part of the Citadel Arrival Sequence) that is included in ALOV, and will be automatically installed with the mod.

As this mod does not alter any game files beyond videos, it may be treated as a texture mod. This means that you can install this mod even if ALOT is already installed. That said, I do recommend installing this mod before or alongside ALOT anyway as there are safeguards in place to prevent mods being installed after ALOT and breaking the game.

For those who want a 21:9 experience with ALOV, check out Paleforce's ALOV - Unofficial Ultrawide Edit


Installation (ALOT Installer Method):
  1. Download the newest version's 7z file
  2. Drag into the ALOT installer. Do not unpack or rename the file, simply download the file as it is and drag it into the ALOT installer.
  3. Install alongside your texture mods!
Installation (Mod Manager Method):
  1. Download the newest version's 7z file
  2. Drag into ME3Tweaks Mod Manager
  3. Click Apply Mod

The mod is also available for download via torrent.
Each torrent is folder based, meaning you can choose either the 1080p or 4K version, or both (if you wanted to help seed).
Spoiler:  
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If you don't have a torrenting program I suggest you use Transmission.
(Unlike most of the mainstream torrenters like BitTorrent, or uTorrent, this one doesn't collect your personal data)
Team and Credits - ALOV 1.0 to 2.5
Project Lead: Audemus
Modelling & Texturing: Mellin
Animation: Mellin
Lighting and Materials: Mellin
Compositing: Audemus
Grading & VFX: Audemus
Upscaling: Audemus

Normandy FTL Loading Screen + BDTS Thruster VFX: Dylan Blanqué (aka plasmaFLOW)
ME1Recalibrated Citadel Docking Cutscene: Kinkojiro
Feedback and Testing: CreeperLava, JimbobJeffers, HHL, Khaar, drakonous7
Rendering Runners: Kholdstare (MVP), AnomalyDetected, HHL
ALOV Sanity Check Script: HHL

Team and Credits - ALOV 3.0
Project Lead: Audemus
Upscale Runners: Kholdstare (MVP), Mellin, 1x4x9, AstralStorm, marsher, Nihren, NotQuiteRadiant, ormr_kin, Solinus, ClearanceClarence,
MrBeansworthy, UltraSun

Ingame Recreations: HenBagle, Sil

Special Thanks:
  • bosp - For providing the Nextcloud ALOV development and download mirror server.
  • Mgamerz - For adding ALOT installer functionality for ALOV.
  • CreeperLava & ALOT Team: For providing HD textures used in ALOV remasters
  • BioWare - For creating Mass Effect. May you return to glory soon.
  • Adobe, Topaz Labs, Blender Foundation and RAD Tools - For the awesome software needed to make ALOV possible!

Additional thanks to our discord communities:
ME3 Modding community https://discord.gg/nN9zxs3
ALOT community https://discord.gg/R8FfcTh
ME3Tweaks community https://discord.gg/73XVYPz