What is ReShade?

ReShade essentially uses information from your game to calculate and produce a screen overlay of effects (called shaders) that can subtly enhance or completely change the look of your game. Tweak the configuration and settings to your heart’s content, or use a preset.

With post-processing you can:

• use different methods of anti-aliasing
• alter hues, vibrancy and sharpness
• add dynamic depth of field and ambient occlusion
• add lighting effects such as lens flare and bloom
• and much more

Version 2.0 combines all the SweetFX shaders with new and exclusive ones. You can also keep using the game's own anti-aliasing, unless you use a shader dependent on a depth buffer (more on that later). Shaders can be toggled and settings adjusted while in-game, in real time.

Most effects can be used for regular gameplay, others will only benefit taking screenshots or video as they distort the UI too much.


On to the Tutorial

I've always wanted that effect without having to deal with NVIDIA stuff because, well... I don't own Nividia. Though, it seems brntwaffles once made a mod for this: http://brntwaffles.tumblr.com/post/...l-quality-a-new

It's just sad that you can't make pictures with it in-game as I experienced it. But I'll definitely try this out!

Edit: wait that was the sims 4, I actually meant this one: http://brntwaffles.tumblr.com/post/...-full-quality-a

Yeah I tried out that SweetFX preset a while ago, and while I love all of BrntWaffles' lighting mods I wasn't a fan of the way that one blew out the UI. This tut should show people how to make their own post-processing injector presets tailored to their tastes ReShade 2.0 also has some neat effects that SweetFX doesn't have - like the depth of field. I fucking luff DOF.

Those are pretty pictures but I wouldn't want to play my game like that. I'd rather be able to see everything than to have the foreground sharp and the background blurry like that.

AO requires a lot from your system. I went from about 40-60fps down to anywhere from 28-55fps depending on how much scenery was rendering, that was with a bunch of other effects enabled though. There are also different methods of ambient occlusion to choose from and then varying settings for those that will all change the impact on performance.
AO isn't the only thing it offers though. A little bit of sharpening is nice for a HQ effect, boosting certain colours or desaturaing some is handy too. You could change the hue of the game or fiddle with brightness and contrast - those things don't really strain your system.
Another advantage is actually gaining frames by disabling in-game edge smoothing (if it's currently set at the highest) and using your graphics card's AA combined with SMAA in ReShade. The result is not as good as the game's highest setting but it is faster.


Agreed, those effects are some I wouldn't play with constantly, and only use for pictures. It's as simple as pressing a key to toggle the effect on and off instantly. But the fact that it's possible is pretty amazing.

I guess the idea is pretty amazing for the storytellers between us or anyone who usually would blur the background for preview pictures for their download, or just using their sims to make certain pictures.

But I do agree that I didn't really like some options in there as well. Like, the hardness option tht was turned on. I actually ended up tweaking the mod that was already made for me. >-< So I bet it's really useful for people who wants to tweak their own 'sweetFX' ^-^

I had tried this and tweak the settings which really satisfying for my view. But unfortunately, my game was crashed. And whenever I wanted to start again after deleting all cache files, just about to start up the game crash again. I can't fix that. Do you encounter this, maybe?

@Endless Goth, you're the third person that's reported crashing. I've had one person so far confirm that it works perfectly for them, and they're using it in TS4. I haven't had any issues whatsoever over the past few days. I even downloaded the program fresh from the website today and installed it into a clean game just for the tutorial.
You'll need to delete the three files that were added to your TS3 install folder and that should stop your game from crashing.
d3d9.dll
d3d9.log
ReShade.fx
I'm really not sure what's causing the incompatibility with some people. Would you mind taking a screenshot of all the contents of your C:/Program Files x86/Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Game\Bin folder and posting it if it's not too much trouble? Also what patch level and operating system are you on? Windoze 10 has beefed up security measures that requires anything that makes changes to the Program Files folders require Administrator privileges.

Lol rub it in why don't ya. Which method/settings are you using?
No crashing for you, everything working alright?

That corresponds to a choice in photography IRL. Given enough light and/or a long enough exposure, depth of field is terrific (i.e. everything can be in focus.) Other way, you can soften up the background.

Well I actually left it off, it causes a weird fuzziness and transparency issue with the UI. Instead I put my focus of changing game colours and sharpness. I didn't think TS3 could have some-what believe colour palette before.

If ReShade is crashing
while trying to add a profile, you need to grant it permanent administrator privileges.
Right-click > ReShade Assistant.exe > Properties > Compatibility > Change settings for all users > Run this program as an administrator > Apply > OK
Windows 10 doesn’t like anything in the Program Files folders to be modified without permission.
I forgot to mention it because all my games are installed in (C:) GAMES so there were no issues.

If adding a profile still doesn’t work, try using the TS3.exe instead of TS3W.exe
Not sure what the difference is, maybe something to do with Origin but someone told me that worked.

@HarVee
The AO options seem pretty hard to get right. Lots of them add unnecessary shadows around foliage. It requires lots of tweaking and even so I still haven't gotten it to a point I'm happy with.
Those photos look amazing! Bumping up the sharpness a tiny bit really does wonders.

@nitromon
Yep! It's not a good effect during regular gameplay though because it makes the UI too blurry in areas. You could try lowering the amount of blur and distance from the camera it starts at but there will always be some blur over the UI.
Here are some DOF images from joanschnitzel

And a few images showing subtle changes to sharpness and curves. If you struggle to see a difference here, click on one then switch back and forth between images in Flickr, you'll definitely see it then.

@Endless Goth
Try the method from post #16, see if that helps with crashing.

That's awesome! Just wow! Do you mind creating a tutorial for ts4?

DOF messes with the UI in all possible ways, but I will still use it for screenshots. Thank you for this tutorial!

Just follow this tutorial but substitute TS4 references for TS3. It's the same process for all games.


I knooow, it's a shame. It would be nice to have it at a really low setting far off in the distance for regular gameplay, like TS4.
Or I wish that TS3 had 'masked' it's UI. In other games post-processing effects don't affect the UI because they were set up to accommodate them, not so with TS3 unfortunately.

I know the sims 4 has this blur, but the sims 3 is indeed weird when it comes to it's in-game lighting and their specular settings. But I guess the issue here is that if they did add this effect to it, we still have the issue with the fact that back in 2009, a lot of computers couldn't really handle the sims 3 (unless someone owned this really expensive computer). I mean usually when i play a game, especially that's from an AAA titles, I had to turn off all those blur kind of effects because it was causing my game to lack. And imagine that back in 2009 when most computer were able to just run the sims 3? Having this open world, with sims all running around, lots that had meshes and all in them too (while in normal AAA titles, there would probably be just props and maybe 2 houses in the world being set up like the sims 3 does). I mean, when I was playing Assassin's creed Brotherhood, when the city was crowed my computer was rendering less Frames than if I would just walk in the middle of nowhere. So I can understand why they didn't add it in there. Though say the sims 3 would be made in this year instead of back in 2009, it probably would have had these effects.

That's true! And I guess they could add these effects with the Enabled advanced rendering (like the options would be faded out when it's unchecked, since people will choose for this option if they know their computer can handle it) I mean that would have made things better for everyone. But I guess it's just the way the game was build that might have made it harder to do, yet if people can accomplish doing what @alverdine has done, I guess it wouldn't have been too hard.

Hi, I also have some troubles with the reshader not working.
I followed your tutorial to the letter, but when I try to start my game, nothing happens.
So I checked the task manager and the sims 3 stays stuck at 13mb.
I've used the ts3w.exe & ts3.exe and both have the same issue.

The reshader doesn't crash, my game just won't start up. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to do something extra?

@mimisapje
Sorry you're having issues with it. A few other people have been reporting the same problem: Sims 3 running in the task manager but not actually opening.
I really don't know why it works for some people and not others. I compared my operating system, patch level, directX version, etc. against another person who had the issue and everything was the same.
How much RAM do you have, and how much is already in use when trying to run TS3?

Thanks for the quick reply!
My specs are (if that is needed):
Gefore GT 740m
Intel Core i7 - 3630QM CPU @2.40GHZ
8 GB RAM
Microsoft Windows 10

If i check, only 40% of my memory is used before I start up the game.
I have used ENB's for other games before and they slow my pc down, but the games still start and are playable.
I'm just wondering if there is a conflict with other files, like a hq mod or something? But that only affects the graphic rules file, so i really don't know.

Anyway, thank you for taking your time to reply and help!

@mimisapje
Alright so RAM doesn't seem to be the cause. I'm pretty sure ReShade doesn't modify any original TS3 files, only adds it's own files that hook into the game while they're in the install directory.
I've started a thread on the ReShade forum asking about this issue. Until someone with more technical knowledge can help troubleshoot it I'm afraid there's nothing else I can do to help sorry! For now just delete d3d9.dll, d3d9.log, and ReShade.fx from the bin.

If you're reheeeally determined to try post-processing, you could try using one of the older versions from that website. They all have different applications for tweaking settings though so you'll need to find tutorials on how to use those or figure them out yourself.

If you don't mind my asking, which shaders are enabled for you and what settings are they on? To get the blurry background? I have a 64 bit laptop, so the steps are a bit harder to follow. :/