"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."


Introduction

The Odyssey modding scene continues to develop, mostly in the direction of oddly-shaped naked bodies and inexplicable retextures.  Innovation in ReShade application remains, even after all this time, pretty minimal.  There are some fine and lovely "cinematic", "realistic" and "performance" setups out there.  If you like the look of the original game and just want more of the same but with slightly crisper rendering by all means check 'em out.  I'm more interested in pushing the edges of what the game-world can look like, creating wilder, more unusual, more evocative images.  I was particularly impressed with the set of LUTs Oh Deer created for his Fallout 76 Memories ReShade, and asked if I could use them in other games.

For ULYSSES I started with the LUTs, then tweaked the contrast, depth-of-field and color grading further, eventually layering on a bit of lens scratch, grain, and other analog film and print simulators.  The aesthetic that inspired me was the sort of mid-20th century photograph you see in old copies of National Geographic or Time.  The ones with the thick, slightly matte pages and the hyper-saturated images.  These were not designed to imitate any particular camera, film stock, or print material, more to evoke the feel of that era of mass media photography.

Effort was made to minimize the performance drain of these ReShade presets.  Effects like borders, DoF, and lens scratches have been hotkeyed for ease of use.

As this is very much a successor to my earlier work with OMEROS, I decided to call this one ULYSSES after James Joyce's modernist 1922 remake of Homer's classic best-teller.

Styles



Each preset is named after a character in the novel.  English lit nerds may derive some amusement from the ways each style reflects the nature of its eponymous character.  Yes, yes, yes.



Installation

1. Install the latest edition of ReShade from its home website.  Follow all instructions contained therein.  Install all of the optional shaders.
2. Download the ULYSSES pack
3. Unzip the styles you like directly into your Odyssey folder (where the game's .exe lives).  I suggest using all of them.
4. In the game, press the HOME key (if that doesn't work, try shift+F4) to open up the ReShade GUI
5. Load up the style you'd like to see (it's the drop-down selector at the very top)
6. Tinker to suit

Fine Tuning

All ReShades are made to be tweaked- that's why there's an in-game GUI.  Some effects (borders, depth-of-field, vignette shading, etc.) look fantastic in certain circumstances, but awful in others.  Some effects look neat, but levy a heavy FPS tax.  So, if you don't like them or don't want to deal with the FPS hit, just turn them off!  To help you out, many optional effects like borders, DoF, and lens scratches have been hotkeyed so you can flip them on for Photo Mode and off for regular adventuring.  To learn more, open up the ReShade GUI and have a look around.

So long as the color grading controls (things like HSL, DPX, Technicolor, LUTS, and so on) are left as they are, the image will look more or less as intended.  But really, do tinker with  things; everyone's rig has different needs.



F.A.Q.

What did Bloom see on the range?
On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled suacepan: on the left (larger) hob a black kettle.

What did Bloom do at the range?
He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it flow.

What two temperaments did they individually represent?
The scientific.  The artistic.

What proofs did Bloom adduce to prove that his tendency was towards applied, rather than towards pure, science?
Certain possible intentions of which he had cogitated when reclining in a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once revolutionary, for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water siphon, the canal lock with wince and sluice, the suction pump.

What was Stephen's auditive sensation?
He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation of the past.

What was Bloom's visual sensation?
He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a future.

What did each do at the door of egress?
Bloom set the candlestick on the floor.  Stephen put the hat on his head.

For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?
For a cat.

What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat?
Incomplete.  With it an abode of bliss.



Sharing is Caring

Feel free to use these presets as jumping-off points for your own ReShade constructions.  Please be so kind as to give credit where credit is due.  Especially to OhDeerSKR, the one who made all the nice LUTs, frames, and lens effects.  But don't feel like you have to build your own preset from scratch for my sake.

Please post your images using these styles!  When you post, please label your image with the preset you used.  That way everyone can get a sense of what these things actually look like in-game.  Thanks!

P.S: Thanks for the Hotfiles y'all!