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Mods+ReShade can make Resident Evil 2/3 look presentable.

nkarafo

Member
Here's the default image:

Rsf5t8t.jpg



Here's how it looks with mod+ReShade:

ZQDUt3a.jpg


The default look is too blurry because TAA in RE2/3 destroys the image completely. The contrast is also shit, making the game look completely washed out at all times, especially in darker areas. And let's not even talk about the stupid vignette...

You can't fix any of that using the in-game options. You can't make the game less washed out, you can only make it darker or brighter but the contrast will always be bad. You can use SMAA or FXAA instead of TAA but this will cause a lot of shimmering. TAA will make the game a blurry mess at 1080p at least. And you can't remove the vignette. Jesus, that vignette is so obnoxious, reducing your visibility so much. Worse than Chromatic aberration IMO.

So there's a mod out there (RE framework, it works in some other games that use this engine) that can remove the vignette and with ReShade you can fix the contrast (without crushing the dark areas) and sharpen the image a bit while using TAA, not much, just enough to not look like a blurry mess.

RE2 is even worse than RE3 (blacks are basically light grey) so i think the improvement is even more dramatic.

Honestly, i couldn't play either of these games just because of how bad they look. Blurry, washed out and the vignette is inexcusable. I don't know how console users who can't use those tricks put up with how these games look. And i don't know why the developers thought the games look OK. Is it a weird artistic thing that my eyes are too good to understand?
 
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Kuranghi

Member
From reading around a ton of places I think for SDR calibration screens:

Set first page to -1 from max, 2nd page to minimum and then set 3rd page accordingly to stop crushing of shadows, which for me was -2 I think, but it should be near default, just a bit above or below depending on your display type & brand and assuming its set up reasonably well. You'll know you have the right point on the 3rd slider when you bump it down one pip and in-game it will get quite a lot darker than it was. Sometimes the game does crush shadows in SDR you just have to put up with that or you will have raised shadows (even more than they intended) in lots of other scenes/areas. Thats all in sRGB colour space, if you use REC.709 then you'll probably have to set the 3rd slider a lot higher to avoid crushing shadows.

The 2nd screen must be at minimum or you will get raised black levels though.

You don't need reshade to fix the contrast imo, just apply calibration screen settings as above, or at least use them as a base.

Instead of removing TAA I turn off the internal engine sharpening with RE2/3 Ultimate Trainer and then apply (much less) nvidia sharpening to bring back the detail, looks amazing with native 4K its too crusty even at 4K without AA on my 65" and the slight softness after this (comparitively with other games running at native 4K) suits the game anyway I think.

Even at optimised settings (medium volumetics and not maxed shadows) and no SSR at all I found this game is insanely hard to get locked 60@>1440p in cutscenes and heavy alpha scenes, 1620p is doable for locked 60 99% of the time on my 1080 but 1800p has heavy drops in cutscenes, if you want native 4K@60 locked you really need a 2080ti at least because the gap between normal GPU usage and when it really hammers the GPU is massive so you need to be running at 60% GPU usage on average in gameplay to get locked refresh rate when the shit goes down. I don't see the point of playing at 60fps if the cutscenes drop to 30-40 regularly since I really enjoy those parts.

If you are on lesser HW than that I suggest giving up on 60fps and locking to 30fps just so you can get 1620p+ because both of the these games look so much better at really high resolutions, partly due to that TAA.

edit - Oh yeah and to what you asked about artistic decision, yes its definitely intentional to have the raised shadows (not raised blacks, the 2nd screen being minimum will take care of that) a lot of the time, you can tell because with proper settings that show raised shadows a lot of the time will show pitch black when it wants to, they wanted it to look like that, for better or worse. Its 10x better if you dial in the settings I suggest if you aren't already.
 
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nkarafo

Member
RE2 and RE3 Remakes look so bad they're unplayable?
It was bothering me enough to think about it all the time while i was playing, hindering the enjoyment for me.

I never said they are unplayable mechanically or anything but you really needed to reply, didn't you?
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Washed out? Vignette? You couldn't play them? Hyperbole or...? These are Survival Horror games, part of the design choices are reflected in real world tones. Everytime I pass by a tree in real life, it's not jolly rancher green. I don't get people who think the game is subpar or has an error in it if it doesn't look like the Wind Waker.
 

MrA

Banned
I assumed this was going to mods and reshade was going to take the original re 2 and 3 and make them look good , not take 2 games that look great and uh, increase the brightness?
 

nkarafo

Member

This is the mod, OP is talking about.



It starts at 3:10.

No that's way too much of a change. I only increased the dark and bright level just a bit. Making the dark areas less gray but not too dark that can hide stuff. Most of the brightness increase you see in the screenshots is because the vignette layer around the image was removed.

The mods i used are REFramework and ReShade.
 
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kingfey

Banned
No that's way too much of a change. I only increased the dark and bright level just a bit. Making the dark areas less gray. Most of the brightness increase you see in the screenshots is because the vignette layer was removed.
My bad then. Your pictures, looked close to the mod.
 

nkarafo

Member
I guess... just like you really needed to make this thread in the first place? :messenger_tears_of_joy:
Someone might find that information useful, just like i did when i saw similar information posted by others.

It's OK if you don't like it but don't put words in my mouth.
 

Rickyiez

Member
Don't need crappy AA solution when you can increase resolution scaling.

AA off, 140% reso scaling and REC 709 color space has the best image quality for RE2 IIRC
 

Aion002

Member
"I don't know how console users who can't use those tricks put up with how these games look."

Years ago this was cool (and still is):


video games GIF


Now this...


resident evil 2 capcom GIF



It's unbelievable...

That's how.


Good games are good no matter the graphics... If you like a game you don't waste your time looking for graphical issues.

Maybe you just don't like those games as much as you think...
 
While I personally don't and never thought RE3 looks bad (I actually like how colorful the game is), I agree with the OP on the constrast of RE2. It's abhorrent, it's unbelievably bad. It hinders my immersion like hell because I hate washed out colors.

Could you give me a rundown on what exactly I have to do with ReShade to make the contrast in the game better? I've never used ReShade in my life and don't feel like tinkering much outside of whatever necessary.
 

nkarafo

Member
While I personally don't and never thought RE3 looks bad (I actually like how colorful the game is), I agree with the OP on the constrast of RE2. It's abhorrent, it's unbelievably bad. It hinders my immersion like hell because I hate washed out colors.

Could you give me a rundown on what exactly I have to do with ReShade to make the contrast in the game better? I've never used ReShade in my life and don't feel like tinkering much outside of whatever necessary.
First you "install" reshade by selecting the game you want to add it. It only adds a couple of files and a shader folder in the game directory that you can delete if you change your mind.

Then it will ask you what shaders you want to be available. You can use all of them (they will be disabled anyway) but if all you need is to fix the contrast, you can only install "Levels".

Levels have two sliders one for black and one for white. If you enable it, the default values will fix the contrast for you but i think the result is too strong. I suggest a more subtle "6" for black and "240" for white. It makes a huge difference in the dark areas (they no longer look light gray) without hiding any details in darkness.

You can toggle the reshade window with the "home" button. You can also add a hotkey to enable/disable any changes you made so you can always do fast comparisons in any scenes. It's very handy.
 
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First you "install" reshade by selecting the game you want to add it. It only adds a couple of files and a shader folder in the game directory that you can delete if you change your mind.

Then it will ask you what shaders you want to be available. You can use all of them (they will be disabled anyway) but if all you need is to fix the contrast, you can only install "Levels".

Levels have two sliders one for black and one for white. If you enable it, the default values will fix the contrast for you but i think the result is too strong. I suggest a more subtle "6" for black and "240" for white. It makes a huge difference in the dark areas (they no longer look light gray) without hiding any details in darkness.

You can toggle the reshade window with the "home" button. You can also add a hotkey to enable/disable any changes you made so you can always do fast comparisons in any scenes. It's very handy.
I thank you very, very much for this! This might actually really motivate me to replay RE2 again. Thanks for the info and explanation!
 

nkarafo

Member
I thank you very, very much for this! This might actually really motivate me to replay RE2 again. Thanks for the info and explanation!
No problem. Keep in mind that the program gets updated often and the last time i did update it, they changed some of the shader names. If you can't find "levels" it might be something else with that word in it. Or just add all the shaders and you will find it in the in-game ReShade menu. Ask here if you get stuck anywhere.
 
While I personally don't and never thought RE3 looks bad (I actually like how colorful the game is), I agree with the OP on the constrast of RE2. It's abhorrent, it's unbelievably bad. It hinders my immersion like hell because I hate washed out colors.

Could you give me a rundown on what exactly I have to do with ReShade to make the contrast in the game better? I've never used ReShade in my life and don't feel like tinkering much outside of whatever necessary.
If you have an Nvidia card, the easiest way is to use their Freestyle filters. Install Geforce Experience and make sure in-game overlay is enabled in those settings. Then press alt-Z in-game, select Game Filters, click Style 1 and select Brightness/Contrast from the pull-down menu. Play around with the settings and you'll see the result right away.

Chances are you'll also have to decrease the saturation if you increase the contrast significantly.
 
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Presentable? Am I the only one who thought RE2 and RE3 looked admirably good? Admittedly, RE2:Remake looked pretty washed out at times, but I still think it looked quite good overall.
 
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nkarafo

Member
So OP, what have you got the in-game brightness sliders set to?
The in-game brightness settings i have are according to the instructions the game gives you.

I haven't tried your settings yet because i got it exactly where i want it to be with ReShade. I don't doubt you though.

Even if the contrast can be fixed with the in-game options i'm still going to need ReShade anyway since i want TAA enabled and with ReShade i can reduce the blurriness.
 

Kuranghi

Member
The in-game brightness settings i have are according to the instructions the game gives you.

I haven't tried your settings yet because i got it exactly where i want it to be with ReShade. I don't doubt you though.

Even if the contrast can be fixed with the in-game options i'm still going to need ReShade anyway since i want TAA enabled and with ReShade i can reduce the blurriness.

Aye no worries I just wondered. I find the in-game instructions are great for the 1st screen but if I followed them for the 2nd screen I settle on like +1 from minimum and have raised blacks on the 3rd screen. The 3rd screen I just gave up on the instructions because when you go to min on the 2nd screen they don't make sense anymore.

If you aren't on a FALD VA LCD or OLED (Like an edge-lit non-VA panel monitor/TV) then you might not even notice a difference between minimum and a few pips up from min on the 2nd screen because the panel can't show a black level that low/turn off the dimming zones due to being edge-lit.

The screenshot looks great anyway and as you know its got that "grey" presentation intentionally so its still going to have grey shadows whether you have 2nd screen at min or a bit higher. I spent like 12+ hours in total tweaking these games over the years so I'm always eager to save other people that time I "wasted" not playing the game.
 

nkarafo

Member
TIL some people think RE 2&3 Remakes look bad.
It's not the graphics themselves that look bad (they look amazing), it's the image quality. Both RE2 and 3 have a very washed out look and it's TAA implementation makes the image way too blurry. The dark vignette around the screen also reduces visibility.

I thought this was pretty obvious but i guess it's my fault not explaining it better in OP.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
To say something looks better, is one thing. I mean, it's subjective, so whatever.

To say something made in the RE Engine isn't "presentable" or can't be played because of its looks is also subjective. But, it's ridiculous IMO.

Wild to me. I've always thought that engine was and is beautiful, I didn't know anyone felt this way about it. That's wild.

Honestly, the difference in those shots can be seen. But to me, it doesn't scream "can't play" to "can play", I mean, it's not THAT significant of a change.
 
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