Fixing The Graphics Of FINAL FANTASY XIV

by



I’ve spent the past two months hard at work developing ReShade and GShade shaders to improve the graphics of Final Fantasy XIV. In this video I go over my creative and developmental process from start to finish explaining the decisions I made, the major issues I came across and the theory behind it all. Did I accomplish my goals of improving the visuals? Let me know!

Topics covered include fog, bloom, color correction, HDR injection, color blending, improved sharpness filtering, tone mapping, auto exposure, and screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO).

Download the shaders and presets here!
https://github.com/GarrettGunnell/AcerolaFX/wiki

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Acerola_t
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/acerola_t
Code: https://github.com/GarrettGunnell/AcerolaFX
Join My Discord Server! https://discord.gg/FxGQvbfm6Y

Music:
Joy – Persona 3
During The Test – Persona 3
Afternoon Break – Persona 3
This Mysterious Feeling – Persona 3
Fearful Experience – Persona 3
The Path Is Open – Persona 3
Sandgem Town (Day) – Pokemon Diamond/Pearl
Main Theme – Detective Conan
Muscle Blues – Persona 4
Like A Dream Come True – Persona 4
New Game – WORLD OF HORROR
Your Name, Please – Earthbound
Climax Return – Danganronpa

arrow in thumbnail drawn by thlurp

Thanks for watching!

This video is dedicated to my friend, Alotryx.

#acerola #finalfantasyxiv #gamedev #finalfantasyxivonline #graphics #shaders

source

22 thoughts on “Fixing The Graphics Of FINAL FANTASY XIV”

  1. CHANNEL UPDATE:

    Hey guys! Putting this in a comment instead of in the video since I'm a dirty content brained youtuber that wants to maximize watch retention.

    In the past month I have seen substantial growth which I honestly didn't expect to see for a much longer time. My goal was 1k subs by the end of this year lol. My plan was to create lots of shorter form, easily marathoned content until I saw this kind of growth. This has been very creatively limiting, as I could only choose topics and projects that I could reasonably finish within a few days due to how much time the script writing and editing process takes or I would have to pull multiple all-nighters to finish videos like Color Palette Compression which were a tiny bit larger in scope. Videos like this one are much more creatively fulfilling and what I would like to produce as my main series of videos; deep dives into my projects, my creative process, and the theory behind the techniques I use. In an ideal world, the 3-part grass series would have been only one video.

    Anyways, my point is now that I have gotten to a satisfactory channel size I would like to transition my content away from a set schedule and go with the "when it's ready" approach. Rather than a video every 2 weeks, it'll probably be once a month so that I can make higher quality videos for you guys. This doesn't mean short form videos are going away, just that there will be more variety moving forward. Also before anyone asks, no I don't want to hire an editor, I prefer everything being done by me because I'm vain.

    Lastly, I'm starting my new job next week (will announce what it is when I'm settled in) which might put a hamper on things. It's my dream to make videos full time, so don't worry about videos never coming out again lol, they might just take a little longer.

    If you've read this far then I'll spoil what the next video will be about: kuwahara filters!

    Thanks so much everyone for all the support these past few weeks, it made what was a pretty bad month much better.

    Reply

  5. Holy shit dude, you're an absolute mad lad. Going where very few have gone before: Down the rabbit-hole that is fixing ffxiv horrendous graphics. Props to you, and a /salute for your service to the community O7

    Reply

  12. The bloom was probably never perfect in part to the fact that the lighting in FFXIV simply cannot be fixed on our end. There's only ever 1 lighting source per scene, so plenty of places aren't going to be lit as correctly as they should be. Every other form of lighting is in it's own small pocketed region, but not overall lighting in general.

    I only noticed this after the 6.1 liveletter when talking about the graphical upgrade coming in 7.0. And now i cannot view the game's lighting the same ever again. It was a fantastic illusion that has now been ruined. 7.0 cannot come any sooner

    Reply

  16. these videos are seriously an amazing learning resource as an indie game artist with little knowledge of the rendering side of things, your channel has quickly become one of my favorites!

    Reply

  17. One thing I'm really curious about that irked me whenever I saw it on streams and videos of people using GeShade is specifically the way layering of effects is handled. Too often I see SSAO end up on top of particle effects and such visual effects, so I'm wondering if there's a way for the SSAO implementation to calculate how much it needs to decrease opacity of the applied shading on the pixel based on overlaying effects.

    Reply

Leave a Comment