Crimson Desert - RenoDX - Graphics Improvements - HDR and SDR Tone Mapping Rework - High Quality Grading Controls

[OopyDoopy]

RenoDX - Crimson Desert

A graphics mod for Crimson Desert built on the RenoDX framework. Made by Forge and Jon (Kickfister), framework by ShortFuse.

Uses the ReShade Addon system, but is not a ReShade Preset!

WARNING: THERE ARE MALICIOUS ACTORS SPREADING FAKE BUILDS/EXES WITH VIRUSES TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THIS MOD GETTING FALSELY FLAGGED BY ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE. THIS MOD DOES NOT CONTAIN AN EXE, AND YOU SHOULD NEVER RUN ONE THAT CLAIMS TO BE A RENODX MOD. THE ONLY OFFICIAL SOURCES FOR THIS MOD ARE THIS DISCUSSION PAGE, THE WIKI, OUR FUTURE NEXUS PAGE UPLOADED BY FORGIUM, AND THE RENODX DISCORD.

Features

Tone Mapping

• In HDR, choose between Vanilla (ACESv2) or the custom PsychoV-11 psychovisual tone mapper.
• In SDR, Black Crush Fix corrects gamma mismatch that crushes black levels on gamma 2.2 displays.

Color Grading

Fine-tune the look of the game with manual sliders:

• Exposure
• Highlights
• Shadows
• Contrast
• Saturation

Auto Exposure

• Alternative Auto Exposure: makes nights genuinely dark and fixes blown-out interiors. Modes: Off / Clamp Max / Dynamic
• Disable Auto White Balance: prevents per-channel AWB from causing hue shifts.
• Disable Hero Lights: removes artificial fill lights applied to characters.

Effects

• Film Grain: switch between vanilla and a new perceptual grain that reduces banding (adjustable strength).
• Chromatic Aberration: scale down or disable entirely (default: off).
• Sharpening: choose between vanilla or RCAS (robust contrast-adaptive sharpening), adjustable strength (default: off).
• Lens Flare: scale or disable lens flare effects.
• Bloom: scale or disable bloom.
• Vignette: scale the amount of vignetting applied.

Rendering

• Spectral Sky Scattering: replaces vanilla RGB Rayleigh scattering with Garcia Linan spectral atmospheric scattering.
• Sun and Moon Improvements: physically-based sun rendering; moon brightness reduced to reveal surface texture detail.
• Moon Disk Size: scale the moon from 1x up to 10x vanilla size.
• Diffuse BRDF: choose the diffuse lighting model:
  • Vanilla (Burley / Lambert mix)
  • Hammon 2017 (energy-conserving)
  • EON 2025 (energy-preserving Oren-Nayar)
• Smooth Terminator: softens hard light/shadow boundary on low-poly geometry.
• Specular Anti-Aliasing: eliminates specular shimmer on distant surfaces.
• Diffraction: adds spectral color fringing to metallic specular highlights.
• Disable VRS: forces full-resolution shading, disabling the game's Variable Rate Shading.

Presets

• Recommended: curated settings tested at max quality with Ray Reconstruction.
• Vanilla: restores all rendering settings to match the unmodified game.

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Instructions

Nexus Mods

Download

Changelog
Note: Snapshots will lag behind a bit. The latest builds are always available in the discord.

1. Install ReShade 6.7.3 with add-on support (you do not need to select any shaders or add-ons in setup).
2. Copy renodx-crimsondesert.addon64 into the game's bin64 folder (the same folder where you installed ReShade).
3. Run the game and open the ReShade UI with Home. In the Add-ons tab, disable Generic Depth and Effect Runtime Sync, then restart.
4. After restarting, press Home again to open ReShade UI and configure settings.

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Compatibility

• External DLLs/injections such as Optiscaler and SpecialK may not work. Test without them first to confirm whether the mod works on its own.
• Compatibility cannot be guaranteed in this case, since these mods and RenoDX all hook into the game at a low level.

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About RenoDX

RenoDX, short for "Renovation Engine for DirectX Games", is a toolset for modding games. It can replace shaders, inject buffers, add overlays, and write user settings to disk. Because RenoDX uses ReShade's add-on system, compatibility is expected to be broad. Using ReShade simplifies the hooking needed to tap into DirectX without patching version-specific executable files.

[Anti-Depressiva]

Highly recommend that for a better experience.
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

[GhostEagle68]

9070xt user here. Thought I'd comment here as well and state the newest snapshot at time of writing this, crashes for me and other AMD users. I'll post a video of what it looks like crashing and reshade.log :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ_6uf7oV18

ReShade.log

[henry0z]

Same here, i have an rx9060 xt

[Kirby1978]

I have the same problem:
It transitions into the final loading with him walking towards the portal thing, then freezes with GPU activity dropping to 0 when the world is supposed to appear. Music continues to play while it's frozen.

[tet0001]

Game is getting updated which breaks things so safe to presume compatibility is pretty narrow. Steam+Nvidia users only.

for everyone else "Compatibility cannot be guaranteed" applies until someone else forks this.

[ywhong82]

After I delete the ReShade.ini and it's worked again.

[Varall2]

Today's snapshot works, I was able to load the save and get into the game. I didn't even have to delete anything.

[hemantgogia09]

Can somebody please answer my question? If i use RTX HDR which i like and dont want to use HDR features from the mod but use the mod to disable other things like film grain etc. Can i do it?

[clshortfuse]

RTX HDR is just fake inverse tonemapping on top of SDR, so probably. Using SDR as baseline won't get you any HDR detail though.

[hemantgogia09]

I know but my eyes like the fake stuff :)

Just wanted to know if i can turn off in game HDR plus mod HDR tonemapping and still be able to use the other post processing features from the mod. Mainly want to turn the annoying stuff off actually.

[hemantgogia09]

I am just going to just try the mod properly HDR tonight so no need to answer and see it myself. Sorry for the stupid question

[OopyDoopy]

Yes you can do that and there shouldn't be an issue. The mod fully supports SDR and doesn't do anything for force the game into any state one way or the other.

I would encourage you to use the new HDR though. If you like how RTX HDR looks, you can get similar punch to that by cranking the highlights slider.

[hemantgogia09]

Thanks, I just finished 2 hours session with the mod. Freaking loved it. Thanks for all the work you guys do. And good to know i can still use RTX HDR if i am not happy for some reason.

[GhostFace0621]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, do I leave HDR in game enabled while using this?

[clshortfuse]

Yes.

[numanjvd82]

Actually i'm looking forward to playing this and found this mod on reddit and some people are saying that it's worth it and needed for a better experience. Only one question though, would it work on my normal monitor which I think is a normal 144hz tn panel, no SDR or HDR?

[Mohal59]

Your monitor is SDR if it doesn't have a HDR option.All monitors without HDR are SDR.
Reno works fine on SDR and HDR monitors.

[numanjvd82]

Your monitor is SDR if it doesn't have a HDR option.All monitors without HDR are SDR.

Reno works fine on SDR and HDR monitors.

Thanks man i will try this then.

[emperorsfist]

This might be a stupit question, but do the sliders for chromatic abberation and vignette work for SDR? They don't seem to do anything unless I play with HDR turned on( then they work). I followed the installation instructions (Generic Depth and Effect Runtime Sync disabled and game restarted).

[Agaso33]

First of all, I want to thank the developers for the loving work they do to improve our gameplay experience; what they do is wonderful.

I have a question, and perhaps someone can answer it. Lately, I've been using the ReShade HDR Installer, and it's really practical for keeping Crimson Desert updated with just one click. My question is: I've noticed that the reno file (addon64) I update from the ReShade Installer isn't the same as the one they upload to Discord. Which one should I use?

[Mohal59]

Note: Snapshots will lag behind a bit. The latest builds are always available in the discord.

[diogomcfelix-sketch]

Hi there, first I wanted to thank you for this beautiful work. But, unfortunately the game just got an update ( Patch Version 1.02.00 ) and the way this reshade looks is totally different... are you going to update ?

[aj-alstadt]

Hi, just want to chime in and say that the 1.02.00 totally broke the look of mine too. Even when turned off in the Home menu, it is totally dull and crushed now.

[Kirby1978]

1.02 broke it for me to

[clshortfuse]

Already on the Discord.

[pixelS84]

Game turned to black mush :D

[Agaso33]

Use the link they upload daily in the pinned messages
https://discord.com/channels/1408098019194310818/1488181809433936084/1489691590732550265

[Aftonone]

It looks really really dark for me? Not sure if I'm doing something wrong. Daytime is dark and dull, nighttime is too dark to see anything at all. Maybe the auto exposure stuff needs some tweaking?

[Orlegg]

yeah me too, I try to reinstall everything but nothing worked

[nexia58]

I had the same issue, you need to update to latest version. :) I found it on their discord.

[Aftonone]

Will do, thanks.

[Ionwulf]

Hi not sure if anyone can help, asked on discord but no luck.

When i install reshade the game opens and i can play, the moment renodx addon file is in the folder it wont even start.

[Kaldaien]

That's because you need to delete msvcp140.dll. RenoDX is not compatible with it, it's just going to cause ReShade to crash the game immediately.

[achrafmansouri62-hue]

Yo guys does this improve fps i have a gtx 1080 and it doesn't do well in this game plus fsr implementation is so blurry that it makes me puke

[OopyDoopy]

No, but disabling chromatic aberration and having sharpening controls might help you with image quality issues.

[zholding77-tech]

Hey I can't see "disable VRS" toggle. At rendering section I see only ray tracing things. Is it hidden or works always with mod?

[OopyDoopy]

It's always disabled since it's simply a bad pair with modern upscalers, which provide better results.

[Heliumrich]

Is there any way to fix how most foliage look heavily blurry and shimmery further than ~30m, when using DLSS ?
Doesn't seem to happen when RR is used, but it's heavy...
(also not happening with FSR, but it's just pretty unstable and mediocre in general lol)

My biggest issue with the game (with the flickery shadows, and the LODs, and well also SSDM but that's just how this shitty technique look like by design)

[plexecutor]

Use DLSS 4.0 if you aren't already. The DLSS 4.5 options in this game are shit. RR on forces 4.0 profile E btw, setting to 4.5 will do nothing in that situation, may be part of the reason why you think RR looks better besides the obvious fact that it just looks way better by default.

[Heliumrich]

Use DLSS 4.0 if you aren't already. The DLSS 4.5 options in this game are shit. RR on forces 4.0 profile E btw, setting to 4.5 will do nothing in that situation, may be part of the reason why you think RR looks better besides the obvious fact that it just looks way better by default.

Interesting, thanks.

Can I set the game to use DLSS 4 (no RR), and then upgrade it with nvidia app ?

So I get dlss 4.5 and its preset m, but without that blurry bug ?

If it's an implementation issue on their part that somehow affect only their 4.5 setting slider.
Or it's preset M itself the issue, but I doubt it, it has less disocclusion than K (around fog etc), in other games, for sure

[Fastick9]

Install Crimson Weather mod and turn down a stupid wind

[hasmieinthestu-sys]

This was too good, visual is stunning, damn man ! good work <3

stable 70fps

spec
6600xt
rzyen 5 2600
16gb ram

setting
fsr, native aa, max setting.

[Fastick9]

It would be great if there were an option to increase the brightness of torches, lamps, etc., at night.
Their range of illumination.

[Heliumrich]

Isn't the mod "let there be lights" on their discord just doing that ?