ReShade Setup for COM3D2 (or any games really) ~ Lazy Stalker

This article goes through setting up ReShade, explain how to acquire extra shader effects, and example use cases for several commonly used shaders.

This is written with Custom Order Maid 3D 2 (COM3D2) in mind, though technically this works for practically any games, and I will also uses other games as use cases example.

Table of content:

Setting up ReShade & configuration ◀ you are here
Explaining depth detection, Depth of Field (DoF), Fog effect & Screenspace RayTracing Global Illumination (RTGI)
Other commonly used shaders (updated 29/9/2021)
Random Tips (added 20/9/2021)

Got question? Shoot me a whisper/private message on Discord, username NameInvalid#3419 or KUZU ⩌.⩌ on Custom Maid Server.

But first, let's talk about one major downside

The in-game "screenshot scaling" function will not work with ReShade. If you want to capture 4K you need to run the game at 4K (AND NO DESKTOP SCALING!!!). Don't have a 4K monitor? No problem, solution at the bottom of this article.

COM3D2 Plugin you need to REMOVE

The "Graphic Setting" plugin is interfering with ReShade causing it unable to detect depth map correctly. Frankly that plugin feels a bit broken anyway, please remove it - bepinEx/plugins/graphicsetting.dll

Setting up ReShade

https://reshade.me/

Acquire latest ReShade version from official ReShade website above & run the downloaded executable. Browse for COM3D2's exe, any one of them are fine. DirectX should be selected, click on it to confirm.

Next you will be prompted to download a bunch of shaders from various collections. If you feel adventurous and want to check out what every one of them does, you can grab them right now. Otherwise you can also download them later manually from Github. Do note that installing a lot of shaders will make ReShade starts & reload slower.

For now just grab everything from SweetFX & qUINT packages. Make sure they are ✅ marked. I leave a link down below for all the packages if you want to download them later.

All Github shader packages: SweetFX, qUINT, prod80 shaders, Depth3D, AstrayFX, OtisFX, Brussell shaders, Daodan shaders, Fubax-shaders, Insane-shaders, luluco250 shaders, CorgiFX, Radegast shaders. In most cases the author does explain what their shader does on their Github description. To manually download their packages, simply download the code as zip file.

Understanding ReShade files & folder

After ReShade done installing, it will create several files and folders in your game's primary directory (where the selected game exe located).

ReShade.ini : this is the main configuration file for ReShade, here it lists the directory where the shaders are stored, keyboard shortcut, and more.
dxgi.dll & dxgi.log : this is the DLL file that hook ReShade onto a game, different graphic API will uses different DLL files. If ReShade didn't work when you boot up into a game, you likely just picked the wrong graphic API.
"reshade-shaders" folder : this is where all the shader effect files are stored. Shader files are all in the format of "fxh" or "fx" and they are stored in the "shaders" subfolder. Some shaders also uses textures which stored in the "textures" subfolder. Manually installing shaders simply by placing the shader files in these folder.
DefaultPreset.ini or ReShadePreset.ini: after you first boot up your game, a default preset file will be created. This is where it stores all the shader effect configurations.

Just for reference, DirectX9 game uses d3d9.dll, other DirectX uses dxgi.dll and OpenGL game uses opengl32.dll. Vulkan dont place dll in game directory, instead in C:/progam data/reshade/. To uninstall ReShade from a game, simply remove related files mentioned above and the dll.

Configuring ReShade

Upon first time booting up, you will notice a ReShade header overlay telling you to hit the 'Home' key to activate the configuration panel. If for whatever reason you don't have a 'Home' key... you can always just use On Screen Keyboard (OSK) to do so, simply hit Windows's Start > type "osk" to search and you will see that Windows utility.

You are offered a brief tutorial, follow through if you want.

The first thing we wanted to do is change the shortcut key bindings. As COM3D2 & plugins does uses a lot of keys. 'Home' key in particular is used by Camera Utility plugin, so you want to assign ReShade onto something else to avoid clashing.

"Home" is where you will toggle & adjust various shader effects.
"Settings" is where we configure various ReShade system settings.
if somehow a shader failed to load, you can refer "Log" page for troubleshooting.
this is the page where we configure "depth-map" detection. We will talk about depth-map later.
we want to assign shortcut keys for three of the functions: overlay, effect toggle and effect reload. We don't use "performance mode" much (which disable all shader slider adjustments) so just ignore that one. Assign them with key not already used by COM3D2 and plugins. Personally just use the dash (-) key for all three, you can add Ctrl Shift & Alt modifiers. Use anything comfortable for you.
Normally we set "Input Processing" to "block all", so when you messing with ReShade, you don't accidentally click/adjust anything of the game.
Set shortcut key and location to store screenshot.
"Group effect files with tabs" is highly recommended to be enabled. Otherwise the sliders of various shader effects enabled will become a really long annoying list to scroll.
if you having hard time reading ReShade's UI you can always change the font size here, as well as changing it's style & look.

this is where you select different presets.
you can use the + icon to create a new preset. Do note that the preset file isn't created until you enabled any first effect.
this is the list of installed effects. Tick the checkbox to enable it.
enabled effects will be shown as tab here if you enabled "Group effect files with tabs", otherwise you just get a single page continues long list here.
"Edit Global preprocessor definitions" have something to do with "depth-map", we talk about it later.
every shader effect will have it's own "reset all to default" button.

The order of the shader matter! Shader below will affect the shader above it, while shader at the top will not take into account of the effects below it. You can order the shader list by simply drag and drop.

Ordering example:

do you want your LUT to affect Adaptive/Canvas Fog? If not, then put LUT before Fog.
in most cases you probably want color correction shader like qUINT Lightroom to be at the bottom so it affect the overall visual.
anti-aliasing (AA) shader are probably better at the bottom as well, so it fixes up any aliasing problem caused by depth shaders like fog & DoF

Installing or Removing shader effect files

You don't need to quit or restart game in order to install new shader file or remove existing one. All you need to do is add or delete the files in reshade-shaders folder, and hit the "Effect Reload" key which you should be assigned earlier. This will reboot ReShade completely without the need to game restart. Any new shaders will be loaded - and if there is any problem with the new shader file you just added, there will be a row of red error message on top of ReShade UI.

if the error says missing "_____.fxh" file, you simply is missing a required shader file, fins that fxh file and place it in the "shaders" subfolder, then reload ReShade again with the "Effect Reload" key.
syntax error however is harder to troubleshoot, sometime it just meant outdated shader file no longer compatible with current version of ReShade.

❗❗❗ Capturing screenshot at 4K

The in-game's "screenshot scaling" function don't work for ReShade, that is one down side of it. So in order to capture at higher resolution, you literally need to run the game at 4K (or higher).

Don't have a 4K screen? Just turn on nVidia DSR or AMD VSR, both allows you to output much higher resolution than what your monitor can actually support. Assuming your graphic card isn't too old to support 4K DSR/VSR output of course. On the side of AMD, you need to have at least R9 290X or newer to support 4K-VSR, otherwise you are limited to 1440p only.

However, one quirk with COM3D2 is that, if you not setting your desktop scaling to NONE (100%, no resize), then the game will not render at true 4K. Instead it will actually render at lower resolution. Make sure to set desktop to no scaling! And RESTART the game after change scaling, otherwise the result would be horrendous, even if the capture is in 4K resolution, the quality just isn't if you don't restart.

Several of the COM3D2 mod plugins also do not support any sort of UI size adjustments, and they will appear pretty small in the game when playing in 4K. For example the PartsEdit plugin. Well, there's nothing we can do about that so far.

Additional note for nVidia driver : set "DSR Smoothing" to 0%.