The Witcher 3

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Created by

Adam Maidment

Uploaded by

ADAlVl

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About this mod

An easy to install, light-weight Reshade preset that aims to achieve realistic/cinematic lighting and colour simulation, COMPATIBLE with all lighting mods. All aspects have been calculated and balanced, using a calculation process that follows a priority system, which simulates real world lighting and colour physics combined with colour theory.

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Donations
IMPORTANT!
- TURN OFF IN-GAME SHARPENING AND ANTI-ALIASING, TO SAVE PERFORMANCE/FPS, AS THIS MOD INCLUDES ITS OWN. 
- During cutscenes (and gameplay if you wish) press "NUMPAD 1" for cinematic borders. Also, "HOME" button turns off all HUD. Press it again to turn it back on.


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MY SETUP (In order of relevance and importance to this mod)

1. The Witcher 3 (REQUIRED)
2. Reshade 5.0.2 (REQUIRED)
3. Your choice of Lighting Mods. All are compatible. I use Phoenix Ultimate 7.0.


Good day to you, Witchers.

Welcome to Cine-Natural Resjade. My sole focus here is providing a blend between photo-realism and cinematic colour grading and lighting. C-NR attempts this by using colour correction (which has 0 performance cost) to achieve a coherent visual experience across all weathers and times of day. I used multiple videos and images of E3 footage, real world time lapses (usually in the Nordic regions), created my own "Order of Priority" for lighting and colour calculations and followed these so as to get an accurate lighting representation to use for the Witcher world lore. 


The issues I wanted to solve with my Reshade that were present in the ones I tested were as follows:

1. Sunsets, sunrises and cloud/fog were unnatural with a lack of colour blend and mixing with other elements of the world (i.e during sunset, clouds should be a mix of the sky colour (blue) and the sun colour (yellow) which is why sunset clouds are usually pink. This is known as colour theory).
2. An overall lack of cohesion between all the elements of "Lighting" that are present and how they blend together during time and weather transitioning
3. Over bright night times (which can be intentional for a more FANTASY look)
4. Fires, lamps, torches etc too bright
I will continue to update this mod but for now, here is the 1.0 version. I have all the instructions to install below, quick and simple, for beginners. 

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PERFORMANCE

This preset should not be any more intensive on performance than other Reshades. It could even be better on performance. This is because C-NR does not use any extra FX or processes to achieve it's look. It also features it's own, balanced and optimised sharpening and anti-aliasing which are individually better than CD Projects vanilla options. 



KEYS

- Cinematic Border (NUMPAD 1)
- Turn OFF/ON HUD (HOME)
- Open/Close Reshade Menu (NUM -)
- Turn OFF/ON Reshade (NUM +)
- Turn OFF/ON Reshade Performance Mode (NUM *)



COLOUR THEORY, PHYSICS AND IT'S APPLICATION IN GRAPHICAL MODIFICATIONS


Colour theory is vital when trying to achieve correct colour simulation. Here is a simple example of how it was used.

Clouds during the day are white. Clouds during sunset are pink. Why? During the day, light follows this path:
1. Light says "bye bye daddy/mummy" to sun and travels through space. Space is a vacuum, meaning it is void of any particles. Particles are what give light it's colour. This is why space is "black" and dark. 
2. Light then enters the earth's atmosphere and is greeted by 2 main particles, Mr Hydrogen and Mrs Oxygen, which make sweet sweet light love and out pops lil h20 jnr :) I realise this is getting weird now....
3. o2 and h2o (water or water moisture) both reflect the hue blue. Why? I have no idea :) it isn't important, but this is why water and the sky is perceived as blue. 
4. Clouds particles are so dense but not in a singular form, like water that as the light passes through the cloud, and the millions of particles, it loses a bit of colour each time. Once colour is absent, all that is left is white or black if there is no light. This is why clouds are white in the day. 

However, when the sun is setting, it's light enters from under the clouds and its our eye receptors without being desaturated by the cloud. So the orange fire light from the sun travels through the blue atmosphere. Orange + Blue = Pink as shown below using a colour wheel. 

https://imgur.com/a/MA8l1Xi

This is a simple use of colour theory but vital for achieving actual realism in lighting and colour. 

Hopefully, for any one else wanting to create graphical mods, or any media that uses these concepts, this small guide should be helpful in laying out the thought process. 


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SIMPLE  INSTALL  INSTRUCTIONS


Drag and drop the files below in to your Witcher 3 game folder:
- NL_ENB_Reshade.ini
- ReShade.ini

This is where you will find the folder to put the files in:
E:\GVMXS\GOG Galaxy\Games\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\x64


If you still can not find the "game" folder, don't worry. Adam's got you <3 Follow these instructions if you bought the game through STEAM:
1. Go onto Steam and click on TheWitcher3
2. In the top right hand corner, click on the "settings" button (looks like a cog)
3. Click on properties
4. Go down to LOCAL FILES
5. Click on Browse
6. Voila!!! There is the beautiful game folder. Click on that sonny Jim!
7. Copy and Paste the 4 files above into this folder.
8. Now sit back and forget about the real world for a few hours....days....


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SEND  ME  YOUR  PHOTOGRAPHY

I always enjoy including the community in my graphical mods, so I have opened up this mod page for submissions of your images using ERE. If I like it, it will be posted on the main page with your name. So get those cameras out and start snapping :) 


Extra Help and Recommendations? Feel free to leave me any comments or questions and I will get back to you ASAP.

Thanks guys, 
Enjoy!

Adam