Versions of ReShade from 3.1.1 onwards have reversed the depth buffer by default.
The depth buffer is responsible for all the depth-based effects you might use, like dof, adaptive fog, mxao, etc.
If you are installing ReShade 3.1.1+ from scratch without any old settings carrying over you will likely find none of these depth-based effects look as you expect. For example, with dof the foreground will be blurred and the background will be clear.
Thankfully there’s a really easy way to change it back to how it needs to be for TS4 (and any other game that doesn’t have a reversed depth buffer).
Here is an album of pictures with step-by-step instructions.
For those who don’t need the pictures (it is a simple fix after all):
Open the ReShade gui (usually shift+f2)
Navigate to the ‘Settings’ tab
In the ‘Preprocessor Definitions’ box find the line: RESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_IS_REVERSED
If it is set to 1 it means the depth buffer is reversed. Change the 1 to 0
Navigate back to the ‘Home’ tab
Click ‘Reload’ at the bottom and wait for the shaders to recompile
And that’s it! Now your depth-based effects should be working as intended.
Note 1: If you’re not experiencing any problems with the depth buffer you don’t need to do this. When I upgraded to 3.1.1 I didn’t need to, because my settings carried over from my previous ini files. You’ll probably only need to do this if you’re installing everything from a clean Bin folder, with no old ReShade ini files present.
Note 2: With each new ReShade installation, when you download the shaders from the github repository there’s a chance some of them will be different from how they were when you or other preset creators made the presets you use. If something looks odd you may have to reconfigure the shader settings in the Home tab yourself to get them how you want. I just had to do this with the new mxao shader. Additionally, sometimes creators will give you modified versions of shaders with a preset, and downloading from the github repository will overwrite those modifications. Always keep backups of the files you download in case you need to swap them back in.
Note 3: Don’t forget, for depth-based effects to work you must have Edge Smoothing turned off in the game settings. You do not need to turn off post-processing as well, but it is recommended to edit your graphicsrules.sgr file (found in your Bin folder) to change the ssao entries from ‘true’ to ‘false’ to avoid conflicts with the mxao shader and any other little quirks. (Turning off ssao in graphicsrules.sgr gets rid of the game’s own ambient occlusion (which is what you add back in with mxao), and also the game’s own dof (distance blur), so you don’t need to use a mod to remove blur at the same time.)
Hi..!!! ♥ I have a little issue. so i will love to install all the reshade that you made. but sadly my deskop cant handle. so I edit photos no problem with that. but I will love if you can teach me how can a make the focus camera with reshade. like fucus in somehing and all the backgroud make it blurred? you got it? sorry if my english is not good. i dont speak it. Have a lovely, lovely day xx
Hi there!
I’m not sure if you’re asking how to only use the blur effect in ReShade without everything else, or how to edit pictures in Photoshop to make the background blurred, so I’ll cover both!
ReShade:
Download the latest version of ReShade and install it. When it asks if you want to download the shaders, you only need to tick DOF and SMAA.
DOF (depth of field) is the shader responsible for the blur, and SMAA (subpixel morphological antialiasing) is ReShade’s version of what TS4 calls Edge Smoothing–you’ll want this because you need to turn off Edge Smoothing in the game options, and use SMAA to smooth edges instead. DOF will not work with Edge Smoothing turned on, but it does work with SMAA turned on.
With only those two shaders downloaded your game will load much faster than if you had all the shaders installed.
When you’re in-game, open the ReShade gui using shift+f2. Follow this tutorial to make sure the depth buffer is set up properly for TS4.
Back in the Home tab of the gui, in the top half of the screen you’ll see a line for SMAA, and a few different lines for different types of DOF. Tick the box next to SMAA and you probably won’t need to make any adjustments to it from there.
Next, you’ll want to try ticking different DOF boxes and playing around with their settings until you find one you like. They are all different types, each has their strengths and weaknesses. Marty McFly’s ADOF is probably the best in terms of quality but it’s also the one that is the most performance-heavy, so you might want to avoid that one. My pick would be gp65cj042 DOF–it gives a natural look, can give circular bokeh or polygonal depending on your preference, and isn’t too heavy to run.
Take the time now to set up a hotkey for it. On the right you’ll see an empty box: click it once and you’ll be able to press any key you want and from that point onwards whenever you press that key again it will toggle DOF on and off. It’s easier than opening the gui every time you want to turn it on and off, and it means you don’t have to play with it on, and can just turn it on for screenshots.
In the bottom half of the screen are the controls for the shaders. This is where you change how you want them to look when they’re enabled. Under the DOF settings you’ll see a long list of things to change. At the top of the list are a few things that are global–they apply no matter which version of DOF you chose earlier. The easiest thing to do here is to pick auto-focus and to make it mouse-driven auto-focus. This means that the camera will automatically bring into focus whatever your mouse cursor is hovering over, and anything behind that point will be blurred.
If you don’t want the foreground to ever be blurred (the part of the screen closer to you than the thing you want to be in focus) I recommend setting the Near Blur Curve value to a very high number. I set it to 9000, which is overkill. You’ll need to double-click in the box next to it to type in that number, because the slider doesn’t go that high.
Far Blur Curve determines how quickly the blur becomes its strongest behind your focus point. You’ll probably want to keep this relatively low, but I often change it on a shot-by-shot basis depending on what I want to do.
Blur Radius controls the strength of the blur. This is the value you’ll be changing most often. For wide shots you’ll likely want a lower number, and for tight shots like portraits you’ll probably want a higher number. Play around with it though until you find something you like.
As you go down the list you’ll see you start getting controls for the different types of DOF. If you chose gp65cj042‘s DOF you’ll want to scroll down until you find the lines that have GPDOF in the name. Here you can change things like the quality of the DOF, how bright blurred items should be, the shape of the DOF (the bokeh, the little points of light), and so on. Play around with these settings until you find something you think looks nice.
Now you’ll have a basic setup for using DOF whenever you want, by pressing the hotkey you set up at the beginning. To have the most control you’ll want to fiddle with the controls regularly to make sure each picture looks right. It can be confusing at first, but over time you’ll become more confident and understand which controls do what.
Blur in Photoshop (or other editor):
I used to do this when I played TS3. For example, this picture was edited entirely in Photoshop.
I used a plugin called Exposure by Alien Skin. It’s not a free plugin, I bought it. It has bokeh control, where you can mask or select parts of an image to keep in focus, and it blurs the rest of the image. You can choose different lens types to simulate (Exposure is built to simulate particular film and camera combinations for professional photographers). It’s an incredibly easy and very professional-looking way of getting realistic blurred backgrounds. But of course, not everyone can or wants to buy a plugin just for one thing.
As for how to do it without a plugin, the basic thing to understand is to mask off the areas you want in focus and use one of the blur filters to blur everything else. There are a few good tutorials written by other simmers on this. This is very easy to follow by @smubuh. This tutorial by @evangelisims is really exceptionally good, and explains the basics of focal planes as well as how to achieve different levels of blur in a background.
