Improved graphics in Minecraft. Improve graphics in Minecraft Custom game settings

So, you want to improve the graphics. What do I need to do? First, you need to understand that better graphics means worse performance. So, if you inherited a computer, it's better to be content with a standard game.

Step 1.
Installing ShaderMod
So, you already have a Minecraft client with . You go to Minecraft's root folder (most often it is .minecraft or Minecraft, located in% AppData%, on the local drive) and copy it to the mods folder Shader Mod Core (download for 1.7.2). To continue, launch Minecraft and test its performance by creating a new world.

Step 2
Installing shaders
There are a great many shaders and each of them is unique in its own way. I recommend installing MrMeep, Chocapic, CUDA and SEUS shaders. In order for you not to waste extra time searching for these shaders, I made a small assembly, the archives from which must be placed in the shaderpacks folder, which will appear in the Minecraft root folder after installing Shader Mod "a. You can download this assembly.

Step 3
Health check
Once you have shaders installed, there is very little left to do. Launch Minecraft, open any world and go to graphics settings. There will be an item shaders.

So you've completed your Minecraft graphics upgrade in just three easy steps.

Now I propose to admire the amazing screenshots that can be taken with shaders.

Italian villa.

Now the generation is more pleasing to the eye.

And how beautiful the water is!

Step 4. Optional
If you are confident in the power of your computer, you can install a texture pack
I recommend installing FlowsHD textures, which we have dedicated to

tweet

Foreword

Progress is inexorable - every year the quality of graphics in games is getting closer to what we see in reality and movies.

Will we ever get to the point where games are completely indistinguishable from movies? Certainly yes.

But what to do with old games? Left on the sidelines of history, they can still, as they say, cling to the soul. Graphics are not important if the game is interesting, but a feeling of regret, no, no, yes, slips into the heart. Luckily, there are ways to make older games look better.

No, this is not a photograph. Craftsmen modified the game GTA IV (released in 2008, by the way!). The addition of ENBSeries played a significant role.

Developers rarely update their old games. If this still happens, then the changes are minimal: they add the buzzword “HD” or “Enhanced Edition” (“Enhanced Edition”) to the name, put clearer textures and ... that's it. For example, this is what Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition looks like compared to the regular version:

Improved textures (left) are nice, but the implementation is so-so. The textures are still not clear enough to hide the flaws.

Even this modification is for the better. But what if there is no HD version of your favorite game? Fortunately, this is fixable.

Ways to improve graphics in games

There are several ways to improve the graphics of the game.

1. Own game settings

In the style of Captain Obvious, I inform you: each game for the computer has its own graphics settings. This is done in order to be able to play comfortably on computers of low performance. Those who want to see beautiful rays of light from heaven at dawn, reflected on the dew drops of Tamriel roadside grasses, realistic shadows and glare from the fire, and even so that all this does not slow down, take a more powerful computer or go outside. If your computer is of the “office” level, you will have to abandon the beauties and set the settings to a minimum - everything is blurry and primitive, but the game works without freezes.

Does the game slow down at maximum graphic settings? Congratulations - the video card and processor cope with the load, you can improve the graphics using third-party tools.

2. Video card driver settings

By using nVidia Control Panel(in Russian "nVidia Control Panel"), Catalyst Control Center or Intel Graphics and Media Control Panels(it all depends on the manufacturer of the video card) you can force some game settings if they do not change in the game itself or there are no such options at all. Unfortunately, the possibilities are limited. The settings for pixel smoothing, anisotropic filtering (clearness of distant textures) and mip bias (also responsible for the clarity of textures, objects), and some others are available to us. In practice, only the forced inclusion of anti-aliasing comes in handy if there is no such option in the game.

3. SweetFX - set of filters

Imagine that the picture of the game is a video recording on which you can apply effects. This is how SweetFX works.

Most amateur graphics patches for games are just tweaked by this thing.

SweetFX(FXAA Post Process Injector, alternative - FXAA Tool) - a set of filters (so-called shaders) applied over game pictures. You can't make water look more realistic with SweetFX or make characters cast normal shadows, no. But you can apply a number of effects that improve the picture in general:

• Enable pixel anti-aliasing even in games that don't support it in principle (FXAA and better SMAA methods). Pixels on the screen will no longer be visible.
• Sharpen the image with the sharpening filter.
• Add a vignette effect - darkening the picture at the edges of the screen. This technique concentrates the eye on the center of the screen and adds the effect of volume.
• Adjust the brightness, contrast, color scheme of the picture. If the game annoys you with some shade - just remove it.
• Add the effect of "bloom" ("bloom") - a glow around bright light sources.
• Make a pseudo-HDR picture - when the dark and light parts of the picture are equally detailed, which is more natural for our vision.
• By combining different filters to achieve the same effects as, for example, photos in Instagram.

The most important thing is that all this does not slow down! That is, in principle, this gives a load on the processor and video card, but insignificant, if everything is configured correctly.

Update from 08/06/2018: Now they use . More opportunities, easier to set up (right in the game).

4.ENBSeries

• high-quality pixel smoothing,
• realistic reflections,
• realistic shadows,
• lighting effects (beautiful light halos around the lamps, the sun, high-quality bloom, light rays in the foliage, and so on),
• the effect of adaptation to light, imitating the reaction of our eyes - when you leave a dark room into the light for a few seconds, the picture will be bright and vice versa,
• focus effect - when looking at close objects, the background will be blurred.

All effects are highly customizable. You can add your own if you know how to create shaders.

Opportunities for ENBSeries - a wagon and a hundred bogies. Unfortunately, ENB heavily loads the computer's video card, so all the effects can only be enabled at once on a modern computer with an expensive video card.

5. Patches for games and manual editing of settings

Sometimes developers themselves turn off any effects. For example, the popular game Watch Dogs at E3 in 2012 caused a real delight with its revolutionary graphics. At E3-2013, the game got rid of some of the effects, and in 2014, players were in for an unpleasant surprise - the game looked even more faded. Here is a comparison of the game over the years, from exhibitions to the final version on modern game consoles:

True, there is another opinion - they say that the exhibitions showed the most impressive moments of the game, in the final version in exactly the same situations (coincidence of time of day, weather, place) the game looks exactly the same as in 2012.

Be that as it may, enthusiasts find blocked options in the game code and turn them on, making the graphics more realistic. I will not provide a link to the Watch Dogs patch for obvious reasons, I will only say its name: TheWorse Mod for Watch_Dogs.

You can always use Google to find patches and graphics improvement tips for your games. I also draw your attention to the WideScreen Gaming site, dedicated to ways to run games on modern widescreen monitors and multi-monitor configurations. Simply put, there is a database of patches that allow you to run old games in modern screen resolution.

SweetFX

The easiest and most interesting method to improve game graphics is to use SweetFX.

Install SweetFX

Let's start improving the graphics. Let's start with a simple one - installing SweetFX.

Perhaps a new version has been released since the article was written, so you can look at the official website.

Step 1. Unpack the downloaded archive SweetFX-Configurator_standalone_with_SweetFX_1.5.1.7z to any folder. The easiest way is in the Documents folder.

If the archive does not open, then you do not have an archiver installed. I recommend 7zip.

Step 2 In the unpacked folder we find the program SweetFX_config.exe.Create a shortcut for it on the Desktop so that you do not have to open the folder every time.

Step 3 To implement effects into the game, finally run SweetFX_config and press Add new game:

For clarity, I decided to ennoble an old but interesting game GTA: San Andreas. After adding it to the list, install SweetFX with the button " Add SweetFX". All the necessary files will be copied to the game folder, the settings will appear in the window:

To save the settings automatically, check the " Automatically save on changes«.

Each effect is enabled by a checkbox. Everything is configured in detail: just select the filter with the mouse - a list of its settings will appear below.

A few tips for setting up each effect:

• The description contains the minimum and maximum values ​​of the parameter.
• The description in square brackets shows the standard value of the parameter.
• The value is set manually, and you can enter a fractional value using a dot (not a comma!).

You don't need to restart the game to see the changes. You can collapse it, edit the settings in the SweetFX Configurator and expand it again - the effect is applied immediately. If something is wrong, the "Pause/Break" keyboard button will manually reload the settings. And "Scroll Lock" turns SweetFX off and on.

Description of SweetFX filters

If you know English, great. If not, below you will find the translation of each title.

1.SMAA Anti-Aliasing: image smoothing using the SMAA method.

To show what pixel smoothing is, I prepared a visual animation for you using GTA San Andreas as an example (by the way, SweetFX also works with GTA 5):

Individual pixels are almost invisible, sharp lines are smoothed out.

The standard (and popular) MSAA anti-aliasing method works clumsily, but qualitatively: the game image is rendered by the video card at a resolution several times higher than the resolution of your monitor, then it is reduced. High quality - the pixels are not visible, the picture is clear - is achieved through a huge amount of calculations that not every video card is able to perform.

In order not to load the video card once again, they came up with methods for smoothing the picture without scaling - FXAA and a more advanced SMAA. Unfortunately, SweetFX smoothes the entire image on the screen at once, so all the inscriptions are slightly distorted. If you select the SMAA line and set the SMAA_CORNER_ROUNDING parameter (corner smoothing strength) to the maximum value of 100, this distortion will be very noticeable, but the picture will become very “smooth”.

For those who don’t care about the clarity of fonts in games (like me), I advise the following recipe: turn off standard anti-aliasing in the game (to reduce the load on the video card and increase the frame rate), turn on SMAA, set the effect parameters to maximum:

• SMAA_THRESHOLD: 0.05
• SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS: 98
• SMAA_MAX_SEARCH_STEPS_DIAG: 16
• SMAA_CORNER_ROUNDING: 100

This will save our eyes from contemplating sharp lines and pixels sticking out from everywhere, but will make the picture a little blurry. Turn on the sharpen effect LumaSharpen- excessive blur will disappear.

In fairness, I note that immediately after installing SweetFX, these effects are enabled. My only advice is to set the anti-aliasing settings to the maximum and turn off the built-in anti-aliasing in the game so that the frame rate remains high.

2. FXAA Anti-aliasing: an ancestor of SMAA anti-aliasing. Blurs the image more, smoothes the edges not so effectively. Forget about this item.

3.explosion: exploding pixels. The only effect parameter - Explosion_Radius - controls the strength of the effect.

Why do I need - I do not know.

4.Cartoon: hand drawn picture effect. The end result is highly dependent on other effects (SMAA, CRT, Bloom, HDR and Lumasharpen):

The SweetFX Bloom effect has three parameters:

• BloomThreshold - the lower the value, the darker areas are captured by the effect. At zero, the screen is almost all white.
• BloomPower (from 0 to 8) - glow power.
• BloomWidth (from 0 to 1) - glow width.

I most often set the values ​​​​to 40, 8 and 1 - the picture becomes bright, "juicy" in excessively dark games.

7.HDR: pseudo-HDR effect. The effect allows you to see the outlines of very bright and very dark objects. The default settings hardly change the image:

To enhance the effect, I increased the HDRPower setting by one:

Theoretically, the light areas should become darker, the dark areas lighter. But since it's pseudo-HDR, the picture just gets more contrast. This effect is useful in games where the picture is not contrasting.

8 Luma Sharpen- sharpening effect. Enabled by default. It has two parameters - sharp_strength and sharp_clamp. The first is the strength of the effect, the second is the limiter of the effect. Standard values ​​are quite optimal - a bit of clarity without fanaticism.

9 Levels- An effect that adjusts the brightness of an image. Useless because it works clumsily, unlike the same effect in Photoshop.

10. Technicolor- an effect that allows you to simulate shooting with an old camera. Useful if you want to give the image some shade. At default settings, it slightly reduces chroma and gives black a blue tint.

11. Cineon DPX- an effect similar to the previous one simulating shooting with a camera, but implemented differently. You can also give any shade to the image, but there are more settings.

12.Monochrome- makes the picture black and white.

13. Lift Gamma Gain- A useful filter that allows you to separately adjust the brightness of the light, dark and intermediate tones of the image. If you want to tint an image, try this tool first.

14. Tonemap- a set of filters for adjusting gamma, exposure, color, fading (bleach) and removing fog (defog).

15.Vibrance- SweetFX filter, which enhances the chromaticity of faded tones:

The Vibrance filter can be enabled in almost all games by setting the Vibrance parameter (the effect and its parameter at the bottom of the SweetFX Configurator window are named the same) to "0.70". This is enough to make the game shine with new colors without overdoing it with bright colors.

16.Curves- curves. Those who use Photoshop will understand what it is. In short, this is a powerful tool for adjusting brightness and contrast.

17. Sepia- by default, gives the image a brown tint (sepia). You can choose any other shade and adjust its power.

18. Vignette- vignette effect. Darkens or brightens the image around the edges.

19. Dither- judging by the description, the effect allows you to show more shades on the monitor than it can show. In practice, no difference is noticeable.

20. Border- adding black bars around the edges of the screen to give the effect of "cinematic". In practice, it is useless, because. the player needs to see as much of the playing space as possible, an embrasure gap is not needed here.

21.Splitscreen- split screen to compare pictures without effects and with them. For example:

To transfer settings to another game, you need to create settings in this window (enter a name in the field Name and press New preset), select it from the list above and click export preset- the settings will be saved as a regular text document. Button import preset will load such a configuration file.

Where to get ready-made SweetFX settings

In the settings window described above, using the button import preset you can download the settings of other players.

ENBSeries - graphics revolution

Unlike SweetFX, ENB does not always work. But the result is impressive:

Pay attention: there was a shadow from the central palm tree, the sidewalk began to shine a little.

Depending on the ENB settings and the capabilities of the game, the effects will be different. For example, for the game Skyrim, they came up with many variants of ENB. Some of them:

You don’t have to fiddle with the settings, just turn everything on and adjust the color scheme - even this gives an improvement in the quality of the graphics:

ENBSeries, unlike SweetFX, improves graphics by adding high-quality reflections, realistic shadows, and generally improves the picture by changing the algorithms for working with lighting.

How to install ENB

How to install this miracle?

2. The archive is unpacked into the game folder.

3. After starting the game, information about the ENB version should appear in the upper left corner.

How to set up ENB

How to set up this cool thing?

The first versions of ENBSeries were configured by editing the file enbseries.ini using a text editor (standard Notepad will do). The file is in the game folder. You can do this now, but you will have to restart the game to see the changes.

A more modern way - after installing ENB and starting the game, press Shift+Enter- Settings will appear on the left side of the screen. With checkboxes, you can turn on the effects themselves, as well as their options in the corresponding sections.

The universal version of ENB for all games and special ones have different sets of settings. Therefore, do not be surprised if you do not see any items in the .ini file or menu.

Information about all settings:

• ENBseries for GTA 4. Documentation - there is information about setting up ENB for GTA4. In my opinion, everything is chewed there as detailed as possible.
• How to set up ENBSeries: part 1, part 2, part 3 - this is about the old version of ENB, with settings through editing enbseries.ini.

Ready-made ENB builds that improve graphics:

• The largest repository of modifications for games - the Nexus mods site - has an "ENB Presets" section for a number of games. Follow this link, select your game (if it is there, of course), then the menu Files - Categories and look for the item ENB Presets. If there are normal ENB builds for the game, then they are there. For example, I tried from there fifty ENB assemblies for the game Skyrim.
• Also, no one canceled Google. How to use the search, I think, it is not necessary to tell. For example, on the Internet, there are a lot of ENB builds for games in the GTA series.
• For fans of GTA IV and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, pay attention to the site A State of Trance - there the author talks (in English) about the best mods to improve the graphics of these games.

Advice: often an archive with ENB settings does not contain the actual ENB files (and rightly so - the author of ENB forbids distributing his creation in the form of assemblies). Therefore, you will first have to download and install the ENB version for your game from the official site (or universal, if there is no special one), then unpack the settings for ENB there. Read the instructions!

How to combine SweetFX and ENB

Both modifications work by replacing the same file - d3d9.dll. Making them work together is quite simple:

Step 1. Install SweetFX.

Step 2 In the game folder, rename the file " d3d9.dll» in, for example, « d3d9-sweetfx.dll«.

Step 3 Install ENB (SweetFX won't work yet).

Step 4 Open the file with Notepad enblockal.ini in the game folder, correct the beginning of the file like this:

EnableProxyLibrary= true InitProxyFunctions= true ProxyLibrary= d3d9-sweetfx.dll

I have highlighted what you need to fix.

Step 5 You can customize ENB and SweetFX.

ENB and SweetFX will work together.

What games can be improved graphics

Unfortunately, SweetFX and ENB do not work with all games. To explain why this happens, you need to tell a little theory.

The image from the game that we see on the screen can be drawn in different ways. Most Popular:

1. GDI- a graphics output method that appeared for the first time in Windows 95. It practically does not use the resources of the video card, so the output of three-dimensional graphics is impossible. SweetFX and ENB are not supported for a simple reason - games that use this method are primitive in terms of graphics (for example, cards, checkers, chess). SweetFX and ENB do not work with GDI.

2.GDI+- a more modern method of outputting two-dimensional graphics, used in modern programs. For three-dimensional it is still inappropriate to use, because with GDI+, any complex graphics will take a long time to draw. SweetFX and ENB do not work with GDI+.

3.OpenGL- a method for outputting three-dimensional graphics, used not only by games, but also by professional programs such as 3DS Max. There are quite a few games that use OpenGL, especially old ones. SweetFX and ENB can't improve graphics in OpenGL games, but you can cheat by converting graphics to DirectX "rails" using QindieGL or GLDirect. UPD: like as with OpenGL already learned to work.

4.Direct Draw- another method of displaying graphics. A lot of good old games work through DirectDraw. Unfortunately, SweetFX or ENB will not be able to improve the graphics in them.

5 DirectX- what is it, I'm already in another article. In short, this is a set of functions, algorithms that allow you to most effectively use the capabilities of a video card for rendering graphics. OpenGL solves a similar problem, but no one has yet developed SweetFX and ENB for OpenGL.

Games work with DirectX mainly through the d3d9.dll software library, located in the Windows system folder. Both SweetFX and ENB need to keep track of the rendering functions in order to work, changing them according to their algorithms. To do this, the d3d9.dll file is placed in the game folder, which contains functions for improving graphics and further redirecting commands to the original d3d9.dll file. Therefore, if you suddenly decide to replace d3d9.dll in the Windows folder with such a file, instead of improving the graphics in games, you will get at best a set of glitches, at worst - an inoperable operating system.

So can SweetFX and ENB work with DirectX games? DirectX comes in different versions - from 1 to 11.1 at the moment (not counting intermediate ones). SweetFX and ENB can work with DirectX version 9. There is a DirectX 8 -> DirectX 9 converter from the author of ENB, but it does not always work. So a lot of games that use an older version of DirectX are left out (like the Mech Commander strategy series).

There is also no converter from DirectDraw to DirectX 9. But there are converters from OpenGL to DirectX. I advise using QindieGL and

If you don't know English and/or don't want to read the instructions - don't try to download the above mentioned converters, just waste your time.

In the future, support for 10-11 versions of DirectX will probably be added, as there are more and more games that support these technologies.

Improved graphics - myths and reality

Myth one: animation and other features of old games

You can improve the appearance of the game. It is especially great when the game officially supports modifications (for example, TES4: Oblivion, Skyrim, MineCraft) - this allows you to significantly improve the graphics and gameplay.

But the graphics are a beautiful wrapper, nothing more. Inside the game will remain old, whatever one may say. Characters will have constrained animations, you won't be able to kick/move objects where it wasn't intended, you won't be able to break through walls where they shouldn't be, and so on.

Does this mean that SweetFX and ENB are useless? My opinion is that they make it possible to squeeze everything they can out of games, so their use is justified. Just don't expect miracles. interactivity they won't add.

Myth two: modern games have the "coolest" graphics at the moment

Every year developers apply more and more technologies to attract the attention of the player. The wrapper must be beautiful to be bought. Accordingly, sales increase, game publishers enrich themselves.

However, truly impressive innovations are extremely rare. Why? Firstly, these are extra expenses - until the technology is implemented, the game will become morally obsolete. Second, the players still buy games, even if their graphical performance is a quiet horror (for example, the Call of Duty series of games is famous for this).

To understand what technologies for enhancing realism in games have been invented, I advise you to read very interesting articles:

After the acquired knowledge, you will understand that the current games in terms of graphics are far from being as good as they could be. Moreover, it becomes obvious - the developers are lazy. They promise something unimaginable without using even a tenth of what can actually be achieved.

Myth three: a good game should have cool graphics

If you enjoy playing games solely for realistic graphics, I have bad news for you - you missed the release of a simply amazing game called Life.

Games are not films. They cling to their plot, features, gameplay. Graphics play an important role, but often sloppy sketches are better than realism (Another World is a prime example).

Outcome

We don't play old games because of the graphics. Strong sense of nostalgia, fond memories of that time, an interesting plot or some trifle that will pass with a person through the years - the graphics here do not occupy the most prominent place.

Tip: when trying to fit an old wardrobe into a modern interior, do not forget about Narnia in it.

Many consider pixel games to be simple and undemanding, but even the popular survival game in the world of blocks manages to lag on quite powerful computers. Meet the OptiFine mod for Minecraft, which you can download for popular versions of the game: 1.13.2, 1.12.2, 1.12, 1.10.2, 1.9.4, 1.9, 1.8.9, 1.8 and 1.7.10. This useful addon expands the default settings and allows you to disable or enable additional game effects. Change the appearance of the game for yourself.

Now your favorite game will stop lagging, and owners of more powerful PCs will be able to improve standard definition, particle display and draw distance. Minecraft mod for graphics OptiFine 1.7, 1.8 or 1.9 allows you to completely disable objects that load the system. Moon and sun, precipitation, smoke, animations of explosions and actions, clouds and much more. The add-on is very extensive and has a very intuitive and detailed customization. It is enough to download Optifine graphics mod for Minecraft latest versions and forget about lags and crashes.

Video review of OptiFine Mod

Installation

1. Install Forge from here.
2. Download the graphics mod for Minecraft 1.7 (or newer versions) and move it to the %appdata%/.minecraft/mods directory.
3. Launch the game with the Forge profile (selected in the launcher). All is ready!