GShade to ReShade Migration

Development of GShade has halted and there will be no more updates going forward. GShade was a privately developed fork of ReShade, the open-source injector for providing additional post-processing tools for games. If you'd like a guide with more screenshots attached, take a look at Holli's Twitter thread

DO NOT UNINSTALL GSHADE YET

We still need the important shaders and presets from GShade. We will uninstall it at the end of this guide.

1. Find your game directory path

Find your installation of FFXIV, the folder should contain ffxiv_dx11.exe .

Common path: .../Games\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game\ffxiv_dx11.exe

2. Backup GShade Folders

Here are the important folders from GShade that we will be migrating over to ReShade. These folders include the core GShade effects and your presets.

  1. C:\Program Files\GShade\gshade-shaders
  2. FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game\gshade-preset(located in the game directory from Step 1)

gshade-shaders folder (image)

gshade-presets folder (image)

Accidentally uninstalled GShade already? A backup folder with the necessary files is provided at C:\Users\Public\GShade Backups. This folder includes your previous GShade backups along with a folder named GSUninstallBackup... if you uninstalled GShade.

3. Delete dxgi.dll in the game directory

This is GShade's executable file. The uninstaller does not delete this file, which is mildly suspicious, as it will continue to load into your game after uninstallation.

dxgi.dll(image)

Again: this file is located in your game directory. DO NOT delete the one in C:/Windows.

4. Install Reshade to ffxiv_dx11.exe

  • If the link above doesn't work, visit the ReShade site and download ReShade 5.6.0 with full add-on support
  • When you run the installer, click Browse... and navigate to your game directory. Make sure to target ffxiv_dx11.exe! The other ffxiv.exe is the legacy DX9 version.
  • Rendering API should be set to DirectX 10/11/12. Click Next
  • A list of additional packages and effects will be provided. We don't need any of that so you can go ahead and click Next again.

5. Copy GShade files over to the new ReShade folders

ReShade has now been installed to FFXIV so all that is left is to move the old GShade files to the new installation! These are the folders from Step 2. Remember to overwrite files if asked. The new ReShade folders are located in your game directory.

  1. Copy the contents of the gshade-shaders folder to reshade-shaders
  2. Copy the contents of the gshade-presets folder to reshade-presets

6. Done!

  • GShade can now be uninstalled over at C:\Program Files\GShade. This won't affect FFXIV or your installation of ReShade.
  • To open the ReShade menu, press the Home key. Your old keybinds can be rebinded in the Settings tab.
  • If you want to move your character and adjust other menus while the ReShade window is open, use Pass on all input under Input Processing (Settings > General)
  • Because GShade was a project specifically made for FFXIV, some presets and effects will be unstable or downright broken. There is unfortunately no way around this (atm). Presets like Project Crystal and Afterglow will break and I wager there are more among the community presets.

While the GShade uninstaller should work, please see this uninstallation guide for further steps beyond running GShade Uninstaller.exe

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Pub: 06 Feb 2023 22:04 UTC
Edit: 07 Feb 2023 02:19 UTC
Views: 90