Starcraft II Remastered: Raytracing

h ttps://www.youtube.c om/watch?v=Iwan_2F40mo

Be sure to fix the spaces on the URL and drop a like on my YouTube channel.

Fullscreen and run 2k even if you lack the screen. Compression, and you will start out with pixels based on supersampling stacked with SMAA. If you like my work go like my video. Thanks.

Im using FidelityFX (First intelligent sharpener for GPUs) and predication SMAA (Anti aliasing without texture blur) instead of the in game FXAA (Ruins textures). The result is the textures are far more detailed, and the raytracing gives more geometric depth to the scene. I have very finely tuned all the layers of reshade to both match the original color of the artists, yet emphasize the greater depth of contrasts in the scene which is in a bar with no lights on since it can be gotten away with a little more considering the render offers more shader complexity period. I overall stayed very close, only enhancing. Never destroying the textures with the default settings most people use and dont think anything about. Its like a HD texture mod or something.

I will eventually make a complete 8K StarCraft II movie and I will fix the graphics glitch where the alcohol appears through his throat for 2 frames. It will be tailored to absolute rigorous perfection because OCD.

Virgin. 20 char…

I thought raytracing is only necessary when there are puddles or something.

Happen to have some comparison images?

It makes stuff look more believably 3D with shadows and glow. Its like super ambient occlusion superior to nvidias HBAO+ that adds no such thing as a glow shader that originates from actual game light source data and down to its color.

Of course im a graphics snob. This just happens to be my favorite game ever.

Example of ambient occlusion effect in SCII.
h t t p ://de.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/starcraft2ao

That old nvidia driver listed above is no longer available and was for vista even if it were. HBAO injection from nvidias driver is a no go.

If you want: Download Reshade here
h t t p s : / / github. c o m /crosire/reshade
Click Code, then click Download .ZIP.

Unforutnately you will need to make a account to download it.
h t t p s : / / w w w .nexusmods. c o m /residentevil32020/mods/26?tab=files
Once you have downloaded that, you will install reshade with StarCraft II In the folder Support64, near the bottom youll find SC2Switcher_x64, selecting DX9 in the reshade menu. Once its installed drag the reshade-shaders folder into the one that was generated by the reshade install and overwrite it.

(Exact calibrations pending final launch)

The catch is, with my GTX 1660 Ti set up, the framerate in multiplayer will drop to 70 from 140 with raytracing on. So its doing the calculations, but its not actually being implemented in the playable aspect of the game.

For best results toggle it ON for singleplayer mode, and OFF for ranked play.

MXAO and PPFX SSDO and SSR (These being functions of the ON position) outright do not work in combat mode of the game but they will slow it down. If that’s too complicated toggle reshade OFF by decheckmarking the checkboxes. Colorgrading is your discretion. For now you must experiment for yourself or wait until I release the specifications for my render.

Also be aware that if you hit the home key with reshade too fast before the game completely loads, under certain system scenarios like mine, you might have to reinstall reshade and the nvidia driver as they can corrupt and the game will keep crashing until fixed. This might also apply if you are clicking way too fast through the menu, but in a way to test its responsiveness. It appears to corrupt both of them which can be annoying, but that’s the only problem ive found.

Drop a like if you want to see a Blizzard Remaster of SCII.

1 Like

Blizzard is pretty much the only company I wouldn’t use reshade with because unless you’re a big name, being banned by them unfairly means you have to threaten legal action which is the only thing they respect; legal action.

Ive used reshade with StarCraft II for literally years now. I wouldnt worry about it bro.

This game just needs some low effort but cheap and fast patching or rebranding as a actual remake. So much of the upgrade would be enabled by more modern technology, much of it open source. My favorite being the vulkan extension add on, like crisis remastered. Its a missed opportunity. One that is very reasonable to expect considering how ancient the code is. Id pay money for a game with better AA, raytracing, and actual higher quality textures with more CPU optimization. Im sure many people would if they did even that much.

Lets be honest. All other games on earth are garbage. The nvidia IO tech should be applied to SC2. All these other stupid games are getting it. Its just slappable.

Well in that case time to use raytracing reshade, already have it for Skyrim so why not for sc2?

Thing is, most RTS games don’t really benefit for ray tracing. I’ve tried, so we’ll see later how it works out.

Yeah some Russian dude got Warcraft 3 refunded, if you recall was its warmly contrived name, working with ambient occlusion on YouTube. I dont know if he knew how to tune it, but it has a lot of promise in older games like this. It might even be the secret sauce behind making that remaster a lot better. Especially if the glow of PPFX SSDO is functioning in this older engine like it is in StarCraft II. Its the rarer effect, that really compliments the shadowed layer and looks awesome.

My guess is it probably does work. I just cant figure out how to get it working myself despite trying basically everything. My guess is its using DX8 and a wrapper is modernizing things, but not modernizing things if you get my drift.

I still have yet to get DX8 to 9 reshade working trying several ways.

Sorry, but there is hardly any improvement at all.
Plus: What is up with the sound? A total mess.

Yeah the soundcard is garbage because its still external. Right now my money is tied up in software acquisition so this PC is kind of a unbalanced joke. 64gb 16 thread monster with a pip squeak GPU and notebook sound solution carry over.

You cant get away with heavier ambient occlusion because then it would bleed through fog and water rendering filters being that it is injected. The performance of the glow based PPFX SSDO is also too limited on this GPU to take to the extreme where the noise is no longer as limiting a factor to get the most out of it. The sample rate needs to be maxed out. In a game like the spyro remake im getting pretty solid performance, but its a modern engine and taking advantage of turing in ways StarCraft 2 just cant. It looks like a Pixar film or something if you crank the resolution, but even so, I need more GPU grunt.

As for the texture quality its pretty wildly different bro. After the nothing can be aliased or have any detailed sharpness pass that is FXAA, you basically get a cheapened only slightly superior image to quincunx. Remember that? We are talking when the OG xbox hardware was literally new’s era caliber image quality “enhancement”. Its more like a pretty massive degredation. If I can see blurring at 4k resolutions using it, thats a problem. But my standards are different clearly than yours.

The video is just a demo bro. Im frankly waiting out RDNA2, and linus’ finding on the so called “titan”. It may very well not be. I will eventually bother making the entire game into a movie, but with real hardware. I might even go entry level ampere Quadro.

Thanks for your interest however and you have overall a valid criticism. I strongly disagree with your assessment of the textures however. Originally it was no AA, or AA and trash textures. Multisampling is a bygone supported feature. It will not return period. Not even with nvinspector and every setting possible.