236 réponses à ce sujet

[CENIC]

Any advice?

 

Which maps/areas have good lighting, how to get a closer zoom, etc?

[catabuca]

I'll start by assuming you don't know about any of what I'm going to describe. If you do, apologies.

 

There are some general tools you can use to make the most of your game visuals and to give you various amounts of control over the camera to set up shots.

 

DAI Cinematic Tools: this is your basic workhorse that you need to get full control over the camera. It's a small .exe that hooks into the frostbite engine and lets you use flycam, change fov (field of view), use things like dof (depth of field - this is what makes things in a scene blurred, typically seen in cutscenes where the background is blurred to give better definition to what is happening in the foreground), and even change post-processing stuff like tonemapping and character lighting. You control the camera using hotkeys. It can be a bit fiddly and is a little buggy, but it's the most important tool to use if you want to take shots unrestrained from your character. There is a readme included in the download. Read it!

 

SweetFX: this is a post-processing injector suite that lets you add various effects to the visuals of the game. For example, you can use SMAA, which is a cleaner, less soft version of AA than the FXAA that ships with most games, and is significantly less resource-intensive than MSAA. Or there's lumasharpening, which, as the name suggests, sharpens the image. You can alter colours, change levels, tonemapping, curves, etc. The page I've linked to has a range of player-made configs you can use as a starting point. Find one you like, follow the simple installation instructions, and you're good to go. If you're confident editing a .txt file, you can alter the parameters yourself on the fly while the game is running so you can see what you're changing. Depending on what features you use, it can and will have an effect on your fps, but that can be very minimal depending on your set-up and, as I say, the features used.

 

SRWE: the Simple Runtime Windows Editor is another little .exe you run after starting the game that lets you change resolution and aspect ratio on the fly. You must run the game in windowed mode. You can create profiles for easy and fast switching. It enables you to capture images in unusual formats and at very high resolutions for better clarity when downsampling (resizing back down to your monitor's native resolution).

 

Of the three tools, the first is the most important. The other two are down to personal preference. It's absolutely possible to take some stunning shots with the first tool alone, just using its flycam and hide hud keys. If you use all three tools, expect screenarchery to take up more time than actually playing the game (I'm yet to finish my first run, I've been playing since release).

 

As for good areas - they're all great. BW have done an exceptional job with the lighting and atmosphere in the game. DAI Cinematic Tools makes things even better, because you can alter the game lighting yourself wherever you are, whenever you want, if it's a little too blue, or a little too bloomy, or if you want to highlight your character's face a little more for this shot or that.

 

An example of the types of things you can do with these tools:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

None of those images were cropped or altered in any way after they were taken (other than to resize the larger ones to make uploading a more pleasant experience).

 

 

I'm not an expert by any means. I'm always striving to get better. I've only just started using SRWE, and I'm looking forward to using it extensively when I start my second playthrough. This person is a genius screenarcher, and has some beautiful DAI shots you can take a look at to inspire you.

 

I hope all that information helped. If you have any questions I'll do my best to answer them.

[CENIC]

A+ post! I had heard of Flycam, but not SweetFX. I'll give them a shot!

[MelissaGT]

Catabuca summed it up perfectly, but I just wanted to add that I also use RadeonPro with my SweetFX. There are some SweetFX injectors that work without it (for Windows 8.1), but I prefer to use my SweetFX presets through it. This is because I can customize where I save my screenshots as well as use shortcut toggles for the FPS counter, etc. I also like that you hear a "click click" sound when you know a screenshot is being captured. RadeonPro will work with an NVIDA GPU...you just can't use all the other available settings that you would an AMD card (Overdrive, etc). For those, you would still want to use NVIDIA control panel/inspector.

 

You can see examples of my screenies in the link in my sig. 

[catabuca]

Yes, Melissa is correct - you have 2 options when using SFX, and one of those is to use RadeonPro to 'inject' it into your game. I don't know if it's still the case, but you used to have to do it that way if you were on Win8/8.1, whereas for Win7 you didn't. I'm on Win7 so I've never used it like that - I just drop the files in the main game folder and edit settings using Notepad++. That said, my poor old brain can't handle things like Dreamweaver for web design - I far prefer writing html and css purely in a text editor. My only concession to modernity is switching to Notepad++ instead of Notepad ^^ The site I linked to above with the SFX configs for DAI will have instructions for both methods.

 

One thing to be aware of if you're going to be using larger resolutions through SRWE or other methods of downsampling - frostbite handles bloom stupidly, so it doesn't scale. This is a comparison (by someone else) of what happens to bloom when you use higher resolutions. With that in mind, sometimes you'll have to decide whether the scene would look better downsampled or closer to its original resolution. You might be able to counteract some of that lost bloom by using the bloom shaders in SFX, but I doubt it'll be quite the same.

 

As for tips on composition, any guide that deals with the basic principles for photography is applicable to screenshot work. It's mostly subjective at the end of the day, although there are certain principles that can make for a more pleasing shot overall. But the best rules are those that are learned and then broken. Make sure you try to learn them first though, so you can break them thoughtfully. Another place to look for composition tips is film: games are arguably more like a film than they are a typical scene you might see on the street, so taking cues from film as to how to elicit certain emotion through composition is a good idea. Composition is something I struggle with a lot. I know when a picture works or doesn't work, I know great composition in other people's pictures when I see it, but I struggle with applying my knowledge to my own shots.

 

One rule I live by: photograph light. Light is the best subject of photography/screenshots. Indeed, on its most basic level photography isn't possible without light. If you have a scene that looks so-so, look for what the light is doing. Where is it falling? Does it create any interesting shapes or silhouettes or shadows? Does it enhance certain colours? The first example shot I posted last night - imo the subject of that picture isn't the dragon, it's the light. Without the light as it was, without the shadows falling away softly and the shifts in colour as it gently sinks into black, it would have been a very different picture. When I look at the light on its back I make inappropriate noises. That picture of Cullen? I don't much care that it's of him. I care more about the highlight on his forehead and left cheek, and the shadowing on the right side of his face. Unf.

 

Try to be selective in what you upload and what you keep archived away (another thing I struggle with).

 

Sort out a good archiving/naming solution that works for you, and stick to it. I have a Screenshots folder, and inside that I have sub-folders for each different game. Under those folders, I separate by year, and then by month, and then by day. I use FastStone Photo Resizer to batch convert from bmp (SweetFX saves screenshots in bmp files - if you're using SweetFX you will want to take pictures using that rather than the game's own printscreen - it's more reliable, it produces larger file sizes that you can convert to whatever you need, and it ensures all the SFX effects are captured, because sometimes they aren't by a game's own screenshot function). If I've taken a picture at a larger resolution, I also use FastStone to resize back down to whatever I want when I convert from bmp to png. After I've converted, I batch rename the files (I use the format year-month-day_hour_minute_second_0000#) and transfer them to the relevant screenshot folder. When I've uploaded something, I generally move it to a separate sub-folder under that month's folder, so I can easily work out what I have and haven't shared.

 

Take the time to look at other people's work. DeadEndThrills is probably the best example of outstanding screenshot work. It has a forum, if you're into that sort of thing - the bar is set very high. There's a very large community of screen artists on flickr who follow each other, help each other out, etc. There's no bar to inclusion, and complete beginners mingle with the best screenshot artists out there. I absolutely recommend it. 

[MelissaGT]

I never realized that SweetFX saves in bmp files! With using it via RadeonPro, it saves them in png format (you can actually choose between bmp, png, or jpeg) which saves a step for me. Sweet!

[catabuca]

I've just started a thread for people to showcase the very best of their Dragon Age screenarchery. Hopefully some people might be able to put some of these tips to good use and share their results.

[MelissaGT]

I also wanted to add another great tool if you are looking to take screenshots while in Skyhold and don't want to be wearing oogly PJ's. This will allow you to wear armor in Skyhold:

 

CheatEngine

 

How to use it:

 

http://forum.bioware...ers/?p=18085182

[CENIC]

Links to tutorials are much appreciated. I struggled through applying ENB to Skyrim and it looks like I'm going to be struggling the same way applying all these injectors and whatsits.

[catabuca]

Good tip about Cheat Engine. It's a great tool. Do NOT run it while playing multiplayer.

[MelissaGT]

Good tip about Cheat Engine. It's a great tool. Do NOT run it while playing multiplayer.

 

Yup, forgot to mention that. I only use it to toggle the Skyhold outfit, but still. 

[catabuca]

Links to tutorials are much appreciated. I struggled through applying ENB to Skyrim and it looks like I'm going to be struggling the same way applying all these injectors and whatsits.

 

I remember putting off using my first ENB in Skyrim for the longest time because I was really confused. So much obfuscating terminology. So many different files. Things to download from a site external to Nexus. Oh my.

 

Once I finally tried it (Fimbulvintern ENB - beautiful) I admonished myself for being so stubborn for so long. It really was quite easy. Most things are once you take the plunge. Since then I have used lots of different ENBs and even helped develop an update to one (Saraan Su'um). I also put out a pack of lens textures on Nexus to use with ENB.

 

SFX is a good deal easier than an ENB (in fact many ENBs come packaged with their own SFX settings). As long as you just put files where the instructions tell you to put them, once you're using someone else's config you don't need to do anything else other than start the game and enjoy the new visuals.

 

This is a nice config to start with - it's very simple and balanced. You download the main package the author links to in the description, and then download the settings.txt file on the config's page. There are instructions in the main package that tell you where to install it. Once you've got it installed, you can swap and change the settings.txt files out for different configs even while the game is running.

 

If you need to use RadeonPro to run it, I don't know how to do that I'm afraid. MelissaGT might be able to help you, otherwise there is loads of information on the SFX directory site ^

 

DAI Cinematic Tools is very easy to use. You just save the .exe somewhere. Create a shortcut to run DAI, and set it to run as Admin. Set DAI Cinematic Tools to run as Admin. Start DAI. Start DAI Cinematic Tools. Wait for the window to say the GUI is loaded, then minimise that window (don't close it). You're left with a small window with a few very basic controls.

 

The first tab enables and disables the flycam, lets you set the speed of the camera, and lets you reset it so it snaps back to your character.

 

The second tab gives you all the visual goodies, like dof blur, tonemapping, character lighting (use blend mode, set blend factor to something like 0.3, use it sparingly - it's AMAZING for portrait shots), etc.

 

The third tab has a few miscellaneous things. The main one is fov - default fov is -1. If you change it to 0 your screen will go black. I change it to 1 when I enable flycam, and then use pageup and pagedown on my keyboard to alter the fov from there. I change it back to -1 when I'm done - this snaps the camera back to the default fov needed for optimal playing, cutscenes, and so on. You can also check a box to increase LOD distance and shadow map resolution - these will have an impact on your performance, so maybe only do that when you have a shot lined up.

 

SRWE is another thing I put off for the longest time. I've seen people using it for a long time now. I sort of nearly tried it back when I was still playing Skyrim, but I was confused about what it did, and about downsampling in general. It was only a couple of days ago a kind soul explained it so very simply to me on dA, and I got a bit more advice from someone on flickr, and so started using it.

 

You treat it like DAI Cinematic Tools and Cheat Engine: you run the .exe once the game has started. Then you choose the DAI process to load from a list, and it's ready to go. There are little boxes into which you can input the resolution you'd like the game to render at. You can save profiles so you can load them quickly at a later date.

 

So, if you want to take a 3:4 portrait (like the one of Cullen up there) you might input the numbers 810x1080, because that will fit on an average 1920x1080 screen. That way, you can see the whole image, and find the position you want. Once you've lined it all up, you can then change the resolution again to something in the same 3:4 aspect ratio but larger, so for example 1620x2160. You'll now only be able to see a fraction of the original image, but that doesn't matter because you've already lined everything up. Now you just take the shot, and change the resolution back again. You can push those numbers to however high your system can cope with. The largest I've gone so far is 3840x2160 but i might be able to cope with more. Some people can easily deal with 6 or 7k. I envy them!

 

I know it's a lot of information to digest. Do it in small steps until you become more familiar. Like I said, I'm happy to answer any questions. I don't claim to know all the answers, I'm constantly learning this stuff myself as well. But I'll do my best to help. Screenshot art is something I really love, so I have a vested interest in seeing more people embrace the tools available and create great shots themselves

[catabuca]

A quick example of the amount of control you have over the game with these tools...

 

 

I used srwe to change the aspect ratio to 1:1, and upped the resolution to 3000x3000 (which I downsampled in FastStone afterwards to 2160x2160).

 

I increased the bloom and sharpening in SweetFX up a little from what I usually have them set for normal gameplay to compensate for the res scaling. My usual sfx config mostly just brightens the image a little without altering colours too much, although Emprise du Lion (where this was taken) generally looks very cold and blue with my config.

 

I used dai cinematic tools to remove the hud and enable flycam. I added a light amount of dof to blur the background gently. I used bloom control under tonemapping with a very small amount of red/pink bloom. I used the fog controls to make the background fog against the mountains a little more dramatic (didn't need to do much to it). The biggest difference comes from the saturation and contrast controls under colour control. I wanted to enhance the purples and brown tints, so messed around until I got something that was subtle yet satisfying.

 

Now, if I could just do something about weapon and armour textures (and hair!) I'd be a happy bunny ^^

[Kung_Fu_Is_Love]

Is there a way to halt cinematics? (apart from the pauses with dialogue selection)

[ravenesse]

catabuca, you really made my day!

My PC hates you, but I thank you so much for the great tipps and screens.

[catabuca]

Is there a way to halt cinematics? (apart from the pauses with dialogue selection)

 

Not that I'm aware of, no. Although I did see a post earlier where someone playing on console reported weird behaviour with being able to pause during dialogue now, but I don't know if that was just a glitch with them, just on console, or what.

[catabuca]

I'm x-posting this from the Best Screenarchery thread, so people can find tips all in one place.

 

Re: DAI Cinematic Tools:

 

Under the Misc tab, you'll see that the default fov is set to -1. If you set it to 0 you get a black screen. If you set it to anything higher you get a normal picture at various focal lengths. I believe that ~50 is relative to default fov, so if you set it to 50 when you want to start lining up a shot and use the fov hotkeys from there you won't get an inverted screen. Set it back to -1 when you're done taking screenshots so that your fov will be correct during cutscenes.

 

(What is happening when you get the inverted screen is the fov dropping below -1.)

 

You can use the fov box in Misc to manually add the fov you want, if you're more familiar with that sort of thing from Skyrim or whatever. The difference is, as far as I'm aware, it's using vertical fov instead of the standard horizontal fov. That means you'll have to calculate what number you should input here in order to get the desired field of view. This is a calculator that was created for BF2. Someone on the DET forum linked to it in the DAI discussion as a means for calculating what you should put in.

 

So, for example, a fov of 30-50 is often quite nice for portraits. Let's say you want 50: you would type in your screen res, followed by 50, and calculate. That gives you the value of 30 - which is what you'll want to type into the fov box in DAI Cinematic Tools.

 

You can keep a little notebook and jot down some of the most common fovs you're likely to want to use, so you don't have to calculate all the time. Or, you can just use the hotkeys. Whatever makes more sense to you. (I change the number to ~50 and then I use the hotkeys from there.)

 

A note on FOV:

 

There are lots of reasons you might want to change the fov of a shot. I recommend experimenting on a single scene with something in the foreground and something in the background, and taking the same shot with different fov values so you can see what differences it makes.

 

One reason might be that you change the fov to a larger number because you want to fit something in frame but you can't move the camera back any further. Likewise, you might change the number down because you want to hide something off-camera but moving closer ruins the shot in some way.

 

Another reason might be that you want to change the perceived distance between foreground and background objects. The narrower (smaller) the fov the closer together objects will appear. That also means background objects will appear larger. The wider (larger) the fov the farther away background objects will appear, and thus will also appear smaller. This can have a big impact on composition, and can help you achieve a more interesting shot if you know what kind of feeling you want to elicit.

 

When taking portraits, you can change the shape of someone's face using fov - which can help get across a particular feeling. A lower fov will make someone's face appear wider and shorter; conversely a higher fov will make someone's face appear narrower and longer (this obviously applies to all objects, but in portraits it can be especially important and/or useful).

 

Be aware, a wide fov will start to distort the image. Objects at the further edges of the picture will start to tilt inwards, so they won't be vertical anymore. Only what is in the middle of your picture will be vertical. This can be used to good effect in some images (I used a very high fov, a low angle, and I also tilted the camera so that the vertical object in the image was the hand on the left, with everything to the right of it appearing to lean over - I think it works here because it enhances the dream-state aspect of The Fade). In others, all you end up doing is creating a picture that looks unbalanced and badly framed. That's not to say that all vertical objects/lines must be perfectly vertical in your shots all of the time. As soon as you start tilting the camera up/down or rolling it clockwise/anti-clockwise your lines will start to shift. It's a good idea to find the object(s) that act as the 'anchor' or main focus of the picture (not always necessarily the people in the picture) and see if that looks well-aligned. If it does, the eye will generally compensate for any other lines that aren't.

 

With that all in mind, if you're not going for a shot that would definitely benefit from the distortion of a wide fov, try to stick to a lower fov as it will create the least distortion. Better to pull out than to go wide. (It's often said that the best tool a photographer has for focusing and fov isn't a zoom lens but their feet.) Still, there is no rule against using a wide fov, and it can be a lot of fun and produce amazing shots - but more can go wrong with a wide fov than can with a narrow one.

 

On a side note: I find it very, very useful to take a practice shot and open it up in Windows Explorer at a small-ish size. My eyes can better discern shapes and relationships between them better in a smaller image than they can when the picture is plastered across the whole of my screen. That way I can usually tell if something is 'off' or if it works.

[Caja]

Thank you all for the great tips and tutorials. I successfully installed (and used) DAI Cinematic tool and SRWR but for the love of Andraste, SweetFX doesn't work for me AT ALL. I'm on Windows 8.1 (64-bit) and I have an Nvidea card. Basically, I followed this tutorial. So, here is what I did:

 

1. I downloaded RadeonPro and then Boulotaur2024.Injector.

2. I installed and opened RadeonPro and changed it to 32/64 bit in the lower right.

3. In the settings I enabled SweetFX, pointed RadeonPro to the location of my Boulotaur2014.injector and defined a hotkey to switch the effect later on and off (I used the "substract" key for that. I tried "pageup", too, but that didn't work either).

4. I made a new profile for Dragon Age Inquisition in RadeonPro and the game showed up on my left side, the way it should be.

5. I downloaded a preset for DAI, opened it in a text editor, deleted the developers note as described in the tutorial, saved it and renamed the file to "SweetFX_Settings".

6. I replaced the old "SweetFX_Setting" file with the new one.

7. I imported the new SweetFX_Setting file in RadeonPro and enabled SweetFX in the right "SweetFX" tab. That should be all there is to do.

8. But if I launch the game absolutely nothing happens. There is no effect.

 

Have I done something wrong here? I would appreciate the help .

[catabuca]

x-posted from the 'Your best Dragon Age screenarchery' thread, since it might be useful to someone.

 

A poster asked why SRWE was necessary, if you could just crop a picture to your desired aspect ratio instead.

 

---

 

The main difference is hotsampling, the next is that setting a custom aspect ratio (AR) lets you compose in-game rather than cropping to whatever might look best after the fact.

 

1) hotsampling - this is an offshoot of downsampling, but done slightly differently. With downsampling, you are rendering the game at resolutions greater than that of your monitor's native resolution and then 'downsampling' so that it fits on your monitor. The reason for doing this is most often as a very good form of anti-aliasing (aliasing is caused when there aren't enough pixels to create smooth lines - each pixel is a square, and squares can't be made to look like curved lines unless there are so many of them that the eye can't distinguish between them; the various types of AA you find in games usually 'fill in the blanks' with varying degrees of success. Supersampling anti-aliasing and things like downsampling increase the amount of pixels available to render scene, making lines appear smoother, and less jagged). Downsampling is very performance intensive, and while it would be nice to be able to run games during normal gameplay downsampled it's often beyond most people's capabilities. Cue hotsampling: tools like SRWE let you increase the resolution of the image on the fly, so you can take a picture at a very large resolution. When displayed normally at a smaller size, the effect is the same as had it been downsampled -- more pixels compressed into the smaller image size, meaning for less aliasing. Additionally, downsampling/hotsampling can increase the fidelity of colours, shadows, lighting -- and when taken together with the improvements to anti-aliasing it makes for an altogether cleaner picture.

 

2) custom ARs - without a tool like SRWE that allows hot-switching of aspect ratios, if you wanted to play in, for example, an anamorphic ratio like 21:9 (akin to the widescreen you see at the cinema) you'd have to force it through your driver beforehand, and it's often cumbersome to set up, and not everyone's drivers allow for it. SRWE lets you set up multiple profiles and switch between them easily, meaning you can play in the regular game AR, and switch it to a different one when you want to compose a shot. As with photography, there's nothing wrong with cropping, but it's a good idea to be able to compose for the frame, and it's better to be able to see what something will look like in a particular AR as you're composing, rather than waiting until afterwards to crop. If I'm composing a shot I might have an idea that it would work better in a 1:1 AR, but I won't truly know until I get into PS afterwards and crop it. Being able to set the AR beforehand, while you're composing, means you make the best of the space on offer and can set up shots in a more meaningful and successful way.

 

Both of these work in tandem, because if you're taking a shot at 1920x1080 and you want to crop it into a portrait AR, say 3:4, you're going to end up with a smaller image. You're throwing away pixels. Being able to set your AR, and then hotsample to a larger resolution, means your end picture could be something like 2430x3240, which gives you lots of room for resizing down or displaying on larger monitors and not losing any of that fidelity.

 

Is any of this necessary? Of course not. It all depends what you want to get out of the pictures you take. Some of my favourite DA:I pictures so far were taken before I started using SRWE. But after having seen a significant jump in quality in the images of screenshotters I greatly admire, I've started looking at how I can get the absolute best out of the pictures I take. In the totally arbitrary and probably imaginary 'screenshot community', theirs is the standard to aspire to, and while as I said in earlier posts about composition 'rules are made to be broken' I've found it useful to at least try to understand what things make a difference in image quality and fidelity, even if I can't manage those things in all the games I take pictures of (not all games support hotsampling - we lucked out with DA:I).

[catabuca]

Thank you all for the great tips and tutorials. I successfully installed (and used) DAI Cinematic tool and SRWR but for the love of Andraste, SweetFX doesn't work for me AT ALL. I'm on Windows 8.1 (64-bit) and I have an Nvidea card. Basically, I followed this tutorial. So, here is what I did:

 

1. I downloaded RadeonPro and then Boulotaur2024.Injector.

2. I installed and opened RadeonPro and changed it to 32/64 bit in the lower right.

3. In the settings I enabled SweetFX, pointed RadeonPro to the location of my Boulotaur2014.injector and defined a hotkey to switch the effect later on and off (I used the "substract" key for that. I tried "pageup", too, but that didn't work either).

4. I made a new profile for Dragon Age Inquisition in RadeonPro and the game showed up on my left side, the way it should be.

5. I downloaded a preset for DAI, opened it in a text editor, deleted the developers note as described in the tutorial, saved it and renamed the file to "SweetFX_Settings".

6. I replaced the old "SweetFX_Setting" file with the new one.

7. I imported the new SweetFX_Setting file in RadeonPro and enabled SweetFX in the right "SweetFX" tab. That should be all there is to do.

8. But if I launch the game absolutely nothing happens. There is no effect.

 

Have I done something wrong here? I would appreciate the help .

 

I'm afraid I've not used RadeonPro so I'm of no help here. I know MelissaGT uses it, perhaps she might be able to help? Alternatively, there are comment boxes on the various download pages for the sfx configs - I'm reasonably certain I've seen people asking this kind of thing in the past, so you might find some help there. Maybe someone else has had the same problem and found a solution, or perhaps you could ask on there and the authors would be able to help.

 

If you do find a solution, I'm sure others on here would appreciate you letting them know what you did in case they have problems with the same thing.

[Captmorgan72]

You pc players and your toys.

[catabuca]

Also x-posted from the other thread:

 

---

 

I just remembered I created this comparison for someone else. It's a decent example to show what difference downsampling/hotsampling can make.

 

810x1080

 

2430x3240

 

[both resized to the same size]

 

Flip back and forth between both pictures, paying attention to things like foliage, the shadows under the tree through the arch, etc. 

 

One of the biggest differences is in the foliage: in the 1080 shot individual leaves/fronds on the far palm appear compressed together, with little space in between them to give them definition. Contrast that to the 3240 version, where fronds are now clearly separated and defined. The whole thing looks much cleaner. Same goes for all the grass and ferns in the foreground, the ivy on the arch, the red stuff on the far tree, etc. You'll see the same effect on hair, on anything that has texture where lines run close together (perhaps a distant fence, or the weave of a wicker basket). It also enriches shadows, makes colours pop, sorts out the worst excesses of rogue aliasing, and just generally gives the picture more depth.

 

The reason is because while the gaps between fronds, for example, actually exists on the models, at 1080 there simply aren't enough pixels to be able to render them properly, so the information is lost as the pixels that are there take on the colour of whatever is closest to it. When I give the image more pixels to play with, it can assign more pixels with more colour information and more accurately render what is there.

 

With the Frostbite engine, hotsampling can have its drawbacks. Bloom doesn't scale so if, for example, you have an area of bloom that covers approximately 3 inches of your screen, when I hotsample by x3 the bloom doesn't scale to cover 9 inches of the screen, it stays the same size. This has the effect of making shadows even darker than they would be normally because wide bloom in the image might have been artificially lightening them. Sometimes that can look just fine. Other times, when strong, wide bloom is a part of the aesthetic you're going for, it can be better to stay at lower resolutions. In this image the bloom filled almost the entire image before I hotsampled. On the whole, I was happy with the tighter effect hotsampling produced, with the exception of where it doesn't carry on all the way up 'out' of the top of the picture -- that's because the spell effect isn't as bright at the top, but because of the hotsampling the constraints of the bloom width become more obvious.

[Caja]

Regarding my earlier post, I found a solution that works for me but it is a bit messy. I'd also like to add that I started with this the day before yesterday, so I'm still new to it and this might not be the best method.

 

First of all, I can only recommend to go to the directory where Dragon Age Inquisition is installed and to write down the names of the folders and files there. These are the ones you definitely want to keep. We will add more folders later but if my steps won't work for you, you might want to delete the new folders and files again.

 

So, these files belong to Inquisition. Don't touch them!

Spoiler

Folders:

core

Installer

Data

Support

Update

Bonus

 

Files:

DragonAgeInquisition.par

version.json

dbdata.dll

Engine.BuildInfo_Win64.retail.dll

DragonAgeInquisition.exe

d3dcompiler_46.dll

 

And here is my little workaround:

 

1. Download the SweetFX Configurator Standalone 1.3.3 here. I know there is a newer version but it didn't work for me. The 1.3.3 version did, so try that one. Once you've downloaded it, unzip the file and move it your Dragon Age Inquisition directory. (In my case: D:Program Files\Origin Games\Dragon Age Inquisition).

 

2. Navigate to the SweetFX Configurator folder and click on the .exe file to run the program. Then follow the "SweetFX Configurater Guide" over here. You have to scroll down a bit. It's an aweseome guide with screenshots and all, so I'm not going to repeat it. (They have a guide for RadeonPro users, too, btw).

 

3. If you're finished launch the game to see if it crashes. Mine worked fine but there were still no effects at this point. We're going to change that now. (If you can already see the effects, good for you . No further steps required then.)

 

A user named Crubino made a combined SweetFX Suite with eFX and Boulotaur.injector that works for 64-bit systems. We will download this and replace some of our old files with it. (In case you are wondering what eFX is, I think it's another injector but one that isn't supported anymore. The newer version is called ReShade. Of course, ReShade didn't work for me either. LOL.). For further information about Crubino's suite read this post. Note: The download link is messed up. Download it here. Unzip it. You should have a folder now named "Bf4 SweetFX + EFX". Open it.

 

4. Press Ctrl + A to select all the files in there and the SweetFX folder. Then copy (Ctrl + C) and paste everything (Ctrl + V) into your Dragon Age Inquisition folder. Copy it in the main folder, not in the Configurator one or in any other folder. Windows will ask you if you want to replace the old files. Click "yes".

 

5. Open the "SweetFX_settings.txt" file and delete all of the description at the top. Then save the file and close it.

 

6. Launch the game. You should be able to see an effect now. At the moment Crubino's preset definies the effects. If you like the look, keep it. No further steps required. If you don't I suggest to exchange Crubino's preset. We'll do that in the next step.

 

7. Catabuca has already linked the DAI presets further up thread. Find one that you like and download it. 

 

8. Open the preset in a text editor and delete the description, if there is one (see step 5). Save it and rename it to SweetFX_settings (important).

 

9. Copy and paste the preset into your Dragon Age folder and replace the old preset with it. That's it. You can start the configurator now to make adjustments.

 

 

Appendix:

Unfortunately, there is a fps counter now in the top left corner if you run Inquisition. I've got no idea how to switch that off. Sorry.

I hope this helped. Technically, you should be able to import presets from within the configurator. Press the "save/load configuration" button and then the "import preset" one. I haven't tried that yet, so I can't comment on it.

[MelissaGT]

I successfully use SweetFX with RadeonPro on Win 8.1 and I actually prefer it to having to use the SweetFX configurator. Too much to deal with the round-about way. I also like being able to take screenshots in .png format by default as well as being able to customize where I want to save them. RadeonPro also provides you with a nice "click click" sound so you know you are getting a screenshot.

 

As a sidenote, I couldn't get custom screenshots to work at all by using the method of dropping SweetFX into the game directory (bypassing RadeonPro). I could only use the in-game "print screen" function, which technically worked, but was sloooow. The only thing that did work was toggling the effects by hitting the Scroll Lock key. Trying to customize using the EFX.ini or SweetFX_settings.txt did nothing. I was only successful in turning off the fps counter in the corner. I suppose this would be ok if I didn't care about taking screenshots and only wanted a pretty game. I have the "compatible with Win 8.1" injector sitting in a backup folder in case I ever want to use it, but so far I'm way happier with RadeonPro. I'm not sure if it's different for folks using the Win 8.1 injector as standalone, but RadeonPro has a wonderful rapid-fire screenshot capability where I can shoot them at about 3fps which is nice to capture moving scenes. 

 

I'm not sure if this will help but here is a link to what I did to get it working on my system. It was pretty easy. 

 

*edit*

I took a look at the guide Caja posted and it says that NVIDIA users need to use the SweetFX Configurator. I'm not sure if a newer version of RadeonPro was released after that post (January 2014) but I use NVIDIA and RadeonPro works just fine. The only thing you can't do is use it's custom settings for AA, etc. For that you will need to use your NVIDIA Control Panel/Inspector (which makes sense since you don't have an AMD GPU). NVIDIA users can only use RadeonPro to inject SweetFX. I didn't use the SweetFX Configurator at all.

[Caja]

I totally agree and I, too, would have prefered to use RadeonPro. To fiddle around with the settings in the configurator is not so nice in my opinion and I've noticed that is doesn't always work. But as I said above, RadeonPro didn't do the magic for me. I did everything that you describe (and that the two tutorials I linked also described) and yet there was no visible effect . Over the past two days I have really tried everything, so I'm glad that my workaround works somehow for me. It's far from being ideal.