No Man's Sky

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TheMercsAssassin

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TheMercsAssassin

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About this mod

A collection of three carefully-crafted ReShades that offer a range of looks to enhance your game by creating a more vivid, realistic, or cinematic image. Every feature and added effect is optional and can be toggled away with hotkeys from in game, no menu-fiddling required. This is the result of months of work, and you'll feel the quality.

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Permissions and credits
Donations
VOIDWALKER RESHADE COLLECTION

 

Description & Features
This is a collection of three carefully-crafted ReShade presets that offer a range of looks to enhance your game by creating a more vivid, realistic, or cinematic image. Each preset has custom-tuned depth-of-field (with two DoF options for each preset), cinematic letterboxing (black bars), multiple iterations of bloom, film grain that's tuned for each preset's atmosphere, chromatic aberration and lens warping to emulate a real camera, vignette, and sharpness (because AA needs a counter). Every feature and added effect is optional and can be toggled away with hotkeys from in game, no menu-fiddling required. This is the result of months of work, and you'll feel the quality.


Install Instructions

*Run your game and ensure NMS is set to borderless mode first. Close your game and proceed. (Note to advance users: Setting the game to borderless-windowed mode is randomly unnecessary for some people, so if you really like fullscreen-exclusive mode for some reason, go ahead and leave it that way, I guess. But if your game CTD's on launch, then try making it borderless without the ReShade files installed then follow the steps in the "Part Two" section again.

Part One
1. If you have mods installed already, delete any mod that changes the game's filters. So if you have a mod that forces the game to use the vintage filter, default filter, filmic filter, etc., delete that.
2. Go to your NMS PCBANKS folder, found here, "...\Steam\steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\GAMEDATA\PCBANKS" and delete the file called DISABLEMODS.TXT."
3. If you do not have one already, create a folder in that same PCBANKS folder called "MODS"
4. Download the contents of this mod, containing a zip file "Mercs Voidwalker ReShade Collection" and open the zip file using winrar or 7zip (I use 7zip, cause it's free and easy).
5. From that zip file, copy only the file "MercRealisticwinterLUT_8012.pak" into the new "MODS" folder you just created in "PCBANKS".


Part Two
1. Download the latest version of ReShade from here: https://reshade.me/
2. Run the ReShade .exe and Chose your NMS.exe, found here, "... C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\Binaries"
3. Select the Vulkan for the API
4. Select yes when it ask if you want do download a collection of effects
5. Deselect all but one of the effects, doesn't matter which one (you'll be deleting it in a second)
6. Go to your No Man's Sky binaries folder, where the game's .exe is, go to your "reshade-shaders" folder and delete the "Shaders" and "Textures" folders 
7. Go back to the .zip file "Mercs Voidwalker ReShade Collection" and open the zip file. 
8. Copy the files "Mercs Voidwalker ReShade Collection", "opengl32.ini," and the "reshade-shaders" folder into your NMS folder where your game's NMS.exe is, "... C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\Binaries". Overwrite anything it ask, if it asks, (don't worry, you're just overwriting ReShade files, not your game files) 
9. Open the "opengl32.ini" file and make sure these three lines match your game's install paths: 
TextureSearchPaths=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\No Man's Sky\Binaries\reshade-shaders\Textures
EffectSearchPaths=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\No Man's Sky\Binaries\reshade-shaders\Shaders
ScreenshotPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\No Man's Sky\Binaries

If your install paths are not the same as mine in the bolded portions (which is where Steam and the game would be installed if you never changed your Steam install folders), you must change them or ReShade will be looking for its textures and shaders where none exist.
10. Launch the game. Don't press anything until the game loads up pass the splash screen, you should see the ReShade notification in the top-left of the screen in a big grey box telling it's loading its effects. If you click anywhere on your desktop as the game is initially loading, it'll likely open in a non-borderless window, which you don't want. If this happens just close the game and relaunch it.
11. Open reshade menu with "F4" and select the preset you want to use from the drop down menu.

You can toggle the entire reshade on and off with the "END" key.
You can take screenshots with "F10".


12. Profit?




Hotkeys
Toggle Full Preset on/off - END
Toggle ReShade Menu open/close - F4
Toggle Smooth DoF (Matso) - 7 on the numberpad
Toggle Film grain - 3 on numberpad
Toggle Letterboxing (Black bars) - 0 on numberpad (made the letterbox ratio the same size as the milestone letterboxing, for consistency)
Toggle Anamorphic lens distortion and chromatic aberration at the edges of the screen - 2 on the numberpad
Toggle Bloom (colorful/cinematic) - 8 on numberpad (on by default)
Toggle Alternate White Bloom - 6 on numberpad (off by default. Don't use both blooms at once)
Toggle Vignette - * on numberpad
Toggle Sharpening - 5 on numberpad
Toggle all color and lighting changes except bloom (use vanilla colors instead) - 4 on numberpad 
Toggle New Advanced Depth of field - / (division key) on the numberpad (off by default, don't use both DoF's at once)




FAQ - Tweaking, Crash Fixes, & Performance Tips
Depth of Field (issue resolution and fine-tuning guide)
You need Reshade framework version 3.4.1 or newer for the Advanced, film-grade DoF to work. 
If using the alternate ADoF, it seems impossible to make the game stop blurring the whole outer-rim of itself right after you scan a new object for the first time, sometimes. I think the trade off is worth it as you can still see how many units received and the name of the creature and then just immediately unscope the scanner and bring the scanner back up the second after the Depth-Buffer clears itself (the inconvenced only last as second). Since the new DOF is not twitchy like the last one and has gorgeous big filmic/photographic bokeh circles, this is the one I have enabled by default. If it's really driving you nuts, you could make the DOF toggle the same key as you use to bring up the scanner (if playing with a mouse and keyboard), or you could use the old DoF (Matso), since it does not have this particular problem but does have many others.
To make DoF weaker and push it further from the character/camera, increase "DOF_FARBLURCURVE". I suggest a value no higher than 4.0, but do what you want.
Crash Fixes
If you have a laptop, you have an integrated graphics card (as I do), and your game probably CTDs on launch when you try to use ReShade with this game. BlueStar over on the NMS modding Discord gave me the tip that disabling my integrated graphics card from my device manager will force things to work properly and for me and him has fixed the CTD issue with this game with ReShade.
Performance
DoF is the most performance-hungry effect. Disable it if FPS is a problem for you with this reshade installed.
Bloom is next in line for performance usage. I would personally disable bloom first over disabling DoF, but that's all personal choice.
Adaptive sharpen is next, though the performance impact is very minimal.
The other effects take so little performance that you may as well leave them on if you like the way they look. The backbone of this ReShade, Lightroom, has next to 0 performance cost. Lightroom controls all the color and lighting changes in this ReShade.
I Like Feature A, but Don't Want Feature B (even the color changes)
There's nothing stopping you from using this reshade without the .pak file and thus keeping the game's use of the many different planet biome filters. Your game won't look anything like it does in my pics if you do this, but you should still have a decent look (disable my bloom on winter planets if you don't use the .pak file). You could even just use all the cinematic effects I've included like Depth of field, film grain, bloom and lens flares, etc., and just disable the color and lighting changes by toggling off Lightroom (with 4 on the numberpad) to keep the vanilla look but with many more cinematic flares.
This reshade is all about user choice.
I would still recommend disabling the vanilla cinematic effects with a mod I link to in the Recommended Mods section.

Future Plans
Perhaps I'll add more ReShades to the collection.
Cheers,
Merc

Credits
Myself, your neighborhood friendly MercsAssassin aka AssassinsDecree - for creating this ReShade preset itself
CosmoDerp7 (on the NMS Modding Discord, Seekker here on Nexus) - for creating a LUT on winter planets to keep them from looking overblown, completely blue, and blinding w/this ReShade. Also for removing the vanilla filters for different biomes and ensuring storms still had their filters (to maintain variety) so I could push my changes through w/ReShade.
The thegamer3006 -or- moddinaccount (@gamer#9804 on the NMS Modding Discord)- for creating the original Default Filter Swap mod which allowed me to see how a ReShade like mine would be possible.
Crosire - for creating the ReShade framework itself
MartyMcFly - for a creating a host of ReShade's shaders and effects, including Lightroom, which is the backbone of this ReShade.
I don't know who made all the other ReShade shaders, but a huge thanks to them. If anyone knows, I'll happily credit individual shader authors. The creator of Matso DoF in particular has a huge thanks from me.
@Oppressor11 (from the NMS Modding Discord) - for helping me test the ReShade and providing screenshots throughout development
Special and MASSIVE thanks to @BlueStar on the NMS Modding Discord - Without him I would have likely never got ReShade running with NMS. He let me know that disabling my integrated graphics card would ensure the game loaded properly on my main graphics card.

Recommended Mod List
1. Clear Screen (removes native scanlines, vignette, and chromatic aberration from the game) - https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/616?tab=files
2. Diverse Environments (most of my screenshots have this mod active, the Enhanced version - https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/493
3. Alien Skies - https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/947
4. True Lighting - https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/382?tab=description
5. Hide All Notifications - https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/914
6. No Crosshair or Dot - https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/757
7. Constructs - https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/323?tab=description
8. Big Things 4 - https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/100
9. Custom Ship Monitors - https://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky/mods/705?tab=description
W.I.P. (cleaning up modlist to eliminate outdated mods)



Other Projects by This Author
You can find my Reshades for other games here: https://www.facebook.com/MercsAssassin/
If you want to see what I'm working on Next (SUBTLE WINK) then I strongly encourage you to subscribe to my Youtube channel, as I usually post previews of my upcoming work there: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn5KAZuLeVmeQLXSMJNBMcA