Arelith

The ambient occlusion built into nwn:ee currently creates some flickering shadows on certain surfaces as the camera turns for me, fortunately there is an excellent alternative through reshade, although it does take some extra work to set it all up.

Edit: unfortunately, there are currently some problems, see post below.

Installation
You can get the latest version of reshade here https://reshade.me, run it and select nwmain.exe. It'll default to assuming the game uses opengl which is true. I had to chose not to download shaders automatically as it didn't work and you can't edit reshade settings if that happens.

If it fails to automatically download the shaders, you can get them here: https://github.com/crosire/reshade-shad ... master.zip, download and extract, for example near nwmain.exe.

At the end of the installation, you can chose to "Edit Reshade Settings" before closing the program, do that and set the "Effects Path" to the shader folder and the "Textures Path" to the texture folder. You need to do this as reshade doesn't seem to get loaded properly otherwise.

Some of the shaders may not work with the latest version of reshade yet, you can delete all the files in the extracted Shaders folder except MXAO.fx and ReShade.fxh, if the game gives an error on launch.

You'll need to edit MXAO.fx to activate indirect lighting. If you'd rather not, you can also download the one I use here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18wvX7u ... sp=sharing
I've changed #define MXAO_ENABLE_IL to 1 and #define MXAO_MIPLEVEL_IL to 0.

Settings
Start a game, you can now access reshade via shift+F2. Add a new profile and select MXAO.fx.
Most of the default settings are fine, but I reduced Indirect Lighting Amount from 4 to 1.25 (or maybe 2.25 for a brighter atmosphere), it was too much light I found.
I also changed Blending Mode from 0 to 1 as I found that surfaces appeared to react better to nearby light sources.
Finally I increased Sample Quality to High. I preferred this one over higher settings as I subjectively found objects to be more distinct than if I used higher settings, although higher settings did seem to produce a little smoother overall effect throughout the scene.

If you don't use indirect lighting though, the characters looked a tad too dark to me and you should consider trying lower values of Ambient Occlusion Amount in that case.

Performance
If you find this makes the game run slower, you can try increasing MXAO_MIPLEVEL_IL and/or MXAO_MIPLEVEL_AO in MXAO.fx as well as lowering the Sample Quality in the reshade settings panel.

Nwn:ee default


Nwn:ee ambient occlusion + indirect lighting
I really appreciate the overall result, it really looks to work well with NWN:EE (it's best to either download or open both images in a new tab to see the whole scene):

Unfortunately, this solutions has some problems of it's own it seems. After a little bit of playing on Arelith, I saw the effect briefly dissappear and reappear several times, it did seem to be a frequent thing. I know I'm not accidentally switching it on and off via hotkey, it's still on, but isn't being applied momentarily.

This didn't happen in singleplayer, although I had only played for a few hours, but given how often it happened online (several times in a minute, but only when moving) I would have expected to have seen it already. It isn't specific to arelith though as it happens on another server I tried as well. I don't know what the problem is though, I dearly hope it is a bug in the game of some sort that might get fixed, as I do think the effect is well done when working.

Edit: I've tried older versions of reshade (3.0.1, 2.0) as well as older versions MXAO, all of them had the problem. In singleplayer, I can run around in the city of neverwinter, the cold winter city in undrentide and the infinte dungeons, all without issue. Then when I try online (tried 3 different servers), there is suddenly trouble and the effect is dissapearing momentarily and it happens often.

I am noticing some of the areas of the UD are extremely dark, like I cant even see dark. Would this procedure help with that problem?

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=17414&p=146403&hilit=gamma#p145943

I would recommend getting Symphony's shader override. It's really good and fixes the super dark areas.

cornelius_4 wrote: Fri Mar 30, 2018 2:40 am Unfortunately, this solutions has some problems of it's own it seems. After a little bit of playing on Arelith, I saw the effect briefly dissappear and reappear several times, it did seem to be a frequent thing. I know I'm not accidentally switching it on and off via hotkey, it's still on, but isn't being applied momentarily.

This didn't happen in singleplayer, although I had only played for a few hours, but given how often it happened online (several times in a minute, but only when moving) I would have expected to have seen it already. It isn't specific to arelith though as it happens on another server I tried as well. I don't know what the problem is though, I dearly hope it is a bug in the game of some sort that might get fixed, as I do think the effect is well done when working.

Edit: I've tried older versions of reshade (3.0.1, 2.0) as well as older versions MXAO, all of them had the problem. In singleplayer, I can run around in the city of neverwinter, the cold winter city in undrentide and the infinte dungeons, all without issue. Then when I try online (tried 3 different servers), there is suddenly trouble and the effect is dissapearing momentarily and it happens often.

perhaps because online isnt a static lighting setup like the OC is. Also not sure if its just me but in your screenshots, little if no changes were seen

Taoen7 wrote: Mon Apr 02, 2018 12:55 pm I am noticing some of the areas of the UD are extremely dark, like I cant even see dark. Would this procedure help with that problem?

Ambient occlusion makes things even darker, ambient lighting makes it brighter... so maybe if you used ambient lighting without ambient occlusion, but I haven't seen the problems with too dark areas myself yet, so I don't know if it would be enough.

Ebonstar wrote: Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:30 pm perhaps because online isnt a static lighting setup like the OC is. Also not sure if its just me but in your screenshots, little if no changes were seen

The most immeadiately noticable change is on vertical surfaces, try and compare the block of stone with a statue on it that is to the left of the man by the portal - in the second screenshot it is darker. That is roughly all it is - a little more realistic shading and lighting... but it still looks close to normal nwn, like it should, as long as you don't turn up the effect too high.

Indirect lighting is a bit harder to see, mostly it makes surfaces near light sources a little brighter... but you might need to switch it all on and off quickly in game (reshade lets you do that with a key combination of your chosing) to perceive the difference more clearly.

The effect as shown in the screenshots is a bit less subtle than what I like using in game (characters are still a tad too dark, compare the man by the portal between screenshots) , 0.2 for both AO and IL makes it hard to see while still improving the overall tone and impression of depth a bit. In any case, until it works properly in multiplayer, I can't really recommend using it.