Authentic Nature Reshade

As we all know, Witcher 3 is phenomenal experience through and through, especially with mods. However, though graphics of the game themselves are top quality, I was always dissatisfied with the colour scheme and lighting of the game. It felt little lackluster compared to the jaw-dropping views of games like Witcher 2 in it's days. Vanilla colour scheme is also strongly tinted to the red, which makes for nice sunsets, but overall makes environment look out of place and turns most people comically red-faced. 

Hence, I sought to create this Reshade which presents the world of Witcher 3 the way I always imagined it to be: 

* With vibrant, authentic greens that make the forests and meadows flourish and shine
* With realistic lighting and exposure, that is properly bright sunny and hot at noon, and dark and shadowy during nights
* With realistic slight desaturation, that makes the world seem as authentic as possible, instead of cartoony
* With people and their skin hue that look like realistically human 




I've spent overall tens of hours empirically testing and adjusting the Reshade in different scenarios and lightings. It's a terrible curse to be a perfectionist like myself, but now I can say I'm 99,9 % satisfied with the results.

Please check out the example images. There are also some comparison shots with vanilla (Wiedzmin) lighting and with Authentic Nature Reshade enabled.


Note: This Reshade preset is designed to work best in following areas: Novigrad and its surroundings, Velen, White Orchard, Kaer Morhen. It is not optimized for Toussaint or Skellige, since these have drastically different lighting and colour palettes. Still, it works surpirisingly well in these areas as well, and is perfectly usable. 

However, note that I've also created dedicated Reshade presets for Toussaint area and another for Skellige area (which I'll share a little later). Meanwhile, my outdated but usable Skellige reshade is here, if you want to try that out. 

 


Please also check out the video of the gameplay with this Reshade! Note that video compression of Youtube reduced the image fidelity somewhat, and it caused some slight ghosting here and there. 

Also, keep in mind that everyone has a different monitor with slightly different color calibration and brigtness/contrast settings, so only way to know how any Reshade works in your personal setup is to test it yourself. It might look exactly the same, even better, or worse. 





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Installation:

NOTE: There are 2 Mod options: First is the full Authentic Nature Reshade with all the effects therein enabled.
The second one is meant for the people who can't stand Lens Effects (I know there are many of you!) - these effects and only these have been disabled. 

1. Download the latest Reshade version.
2. Run the Reshade setup exe, select "witcher 3.exe" (bin/x64), click Direct3D10+ and download all the shaders.
3. Download my files from the files section (reshade-shaders folder and AuthenticNatureReshade.ini file).
4. Paste my files into x64 folder, where witcher3.exe is located, and overwrite if asked.
5. In game, press Shift+F2 to open reshade window, and choose Authentic Nature Reshade from the drag down-menu, or if you don't see it there, 
click in the"+" symbol and write "Authentic Nature Reshade" and press enter - thatshould choose my preset.
6. Important: Once you start playing, under the Settings tab switch "Configuration mode" into "Performance mode" to
improve performance. 


Enjoy the world of Witcher in gorgeous and natural colors!


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If you want to tinker with the Reshade settings yourself, feel completely free, but do realize that all of these filters have some purpose, and  you might lose the intended vision. 

Filters I have used to achieve the effects: 

- LightRoom (most important one, modifies significantly color balance, deepens shadows and contrast, etc.)
- LiftGammaGain (further lighting and color balance adjustment)
- Colormatrix (important color balancing)
- AmbientLight (added realistic ambient light, important)
- Clarity2 (clarifies image)
- Grim (small effect) (Credits and thanks to the author Adysss !)
- Colourfulness (realistic desaturation, quite important)
- Technicolor2 (small effect)
- SurfaceSharpen (moderate effect, easy to adjust to your personal liking if you want)
- Bloom (small-to-moderate bloom increase, this is easy to deactivate if you don't like it. Also includes LensDirt-effect (if you don't like this, there is a file version option without LensEffects)
- LightDoF (subtle depth of field effect, that effects only very far away objects)


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Some other mods I use myself and heartily recommend:

* Friendly Hud
* Preparations
* Friendly Meditation
* KNG's Ultra Bloom
* Wiedzmin Lighting Mod
* E3 Ultra Grass 420
* Improved Particle Systems
* The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project
* Lamp on player's boat
* E3 Candle Flares
* New fires
* HDMR - HD Monsters Reworked Mod


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