USING RELIGHT FOR RESHADE - a tutorial by amoebae
[You can also find this tutorial over at imgur and patreon]
ReLight is a premium shader for ReShade made by Marty's Mods (Pascal Gilcher). It allows you to add four new lights to your scene that help illuminate, and create realism and drama. To download and use ReLight you need to subscribe to the Path Tracers tier on Gilcher's Patreon to get access to the iMMERSE Ultimate package of shaders. Once subscribed, you'll be prompted to link your Patreon account to discord, and then you'll be granted access to his discord server, and, most importantly, to the Path Tracers discussion channel and the Downloads Level 2 channel, which is where you will find ReLight (along with the other premium shaders included in that tier).
Be sure to also download the up-to-date free iMMERSE shader package, because you'll need the Launchpad shader and some of the other included files.
The following guide is for the older qUINT_relight.fx version of ReLight. The latest version of ReLight is MartysMods_RELIGHT.fx, released on 31st December 2023. Many of the settings have changed in the newer version, but you can still use this guide to help understand how to enable and position lights. The guide will be updated/rewritten once I've had time to properly play around with the new version. You can continue to use the older version if you'd prefer.
When you turn on ReLight in the ReShade menu you'll be greeted with these settings. Yours may look different because I've used it a lot and it remembers your last settings.
Take a look at the settings at the top.
Use Smooth Normals = On
Trace Shadows = On
Filter Shadows = On
Use Temporal Supersampling = On
Shadow Mode = Trace All
Shadow Quality = Ultra (change this if you get bad performance)
Shadow Sharpness = I have mine set around 0.65 but you can play around with whatever looks best
Z Thickness = Play around with this too. It controls how realistically shadows fall on and around objects
At the very bottom of the settings is Visualize Light Position. Turn this on so you can easily see where your lights are.
Now we can turn on one of our lights. Remember, it remembers your previous settings so yours will look different to mine the first time you use it.
Under Light 0 check the Active box.
You should see a big circle appear somewhere on the screen. If you have any object close enough to it, you should see them get brighter. If nothing is close to the circle you may not see any difference.
You can see a difference between this screenshot and the last - Shadowheart's face is brighter.
Now it's time to move the light where we want it and change it to a colour we like.
Under the Active box you'll see a row of 3 boxes containing numbers, next to the word Position. These control the coordinates of your circle of light in relation to the screen. You can place your mouse inside these boxes and move it while holding down left-click to change the value a little like a slider.
Left box = moves the circle left/right
Middle box = moves the circle up/down
Right box = moves the circle forward/back
In this shot I've moved the circle of light over to the right and a little further back so it better illuminates the front of Shadowheart's face.
Next you can choose the colour of your light.
In the row below Position you'll see it says Tint. Click on the coloured box next to Tint and it will bring up the colour picker you see in the screenshot. Choose your colour from here. Click anywhere in the main ReShade menu to close the colour picker.
I adjusted the position and the tint a little more until I had it exactly where I wanted it. You can see a darker circle now over in the top right of the screen (my mouse cursor is hovering over it to make it easier to see).
You can use the Intensity slider (directly below Tint) to control how bright the light should be.
You may need to go back and forth between the Position, Tint, and Intensity settings until you get just the right effect.
Here's a reminder of what the picture looks like without that added light. Compare it to the screenshot above to see how great our new little light has been at helping illuminate Shadowheart.
You can turn individual lights on and off whenever you want by checking or unchecking the Active box next to the light in question. It will save your settings.
Now I want to add a second light. I've moved my ReShade window over a little so I can see what I'm doing.
I turned on the Active box under Light 1, and positioned my new light where I wanted it. Look over to the left of the statue in the background. You'll see my mouse cursor, and directly above it is a tiny blue circle. That's our second light!
The further you move the light away from the camera (using the right-hand box under Position) the smaller the circle gets, because it's further away!
I made this light blue, and I turned the intensity up quite high. This has helped illuminate the statue and added nice shadows that help give it some depth.
Here's a screenshot to remind you what everything looks like without any of the ReLight lights I added.
And here's a screenshot showing how everything looks with ReLight turned on and my two lights in action. I chose a subtle effect because I just wanted to draw attention to Shadowheart's face and to the statue behind her.
When you close the ReShade menu the circles that helped you know where your lights were will go away, but the light they cast will remain. Notice how you can't see the two circles in this shot?
You can also uncheck the Visualize Light Position box if you want to hide the circles while keeping the ReShade menu open. This can be helpful if they're obscuring parts of the scene that you need to see while you continue editing.
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And that's it! You can add up to 4 lights and control them independently from one another. You can use them to just help illuminate a character for a portrait, to add drama with bold lighting, or to increase the realism of a scene with better shadows and light falling where you would expect it to. If you have a big fiery sword you can add a light to it that makes orange light cast onto the character who is holding it, which can look really cool. The only limit is your imagination.
(If I ever learn how to make videos I'll translate this tutorial into an easier format, but for now I hope this helps.)