Luma - Native HDR - SMAA - XeGTAO for The Witcher 2

Features

• []Native HDR output with Paper White, Peak White, and separate UI brightness. The game's look is preserved: defaults are vanilla-equivalent [/]

  []Higher precision buffers through the post chain, plus animated triangular dithering at output - much less banding in skies and dark interiors[/]

  []AutoHDR for pre-rendered videos, with a boost slider.[/]

  []Grade controls: Exposure, Contrast, Saturation, Highlights Desaturation.[/]

Anti-aliasing and sharpening:

• []SMAA - the game has no anti-aliasing of its own[/]

  []RCAS sharpening with a slider, applied after SMAA[/]

  []16x anisotropic filtering[/]

Bloom:

• []HDR bloom replacing the game's own - wider and softer, with an intensity slider.[/]

Fixes and extras:

• []Hide the HUD.[/]

Requirements

• []dgVoodoo2, which translates the game's DirectX 9 to D3D11. Use 2. 87. 3 or 2. 81. 3 versions. Other builds emit different shaders.[/]

  []An HDR display for the HDR path. SMAA, sharpening, anisotropic filtering, dithering and bloom work either way.[/]

Installation

• []Install dgVoodoo2 (v2. 81. 3 or v2. 87. 3): copy its MS/x86 D3D9.dll, dgVoodooCpl.exe, and dgVoodoo.conf next to the game exe, then apply the settings shown below the list. [/]

  []Extract the mod files next to the game exe as well.[/]

  []Set graphics settings as shown in the screenshot[/]

  []Enable HDR in Windows, boot the game, and press <HOME> to open the ReShade UI.[/]

  []Leave the in-game Brightness slider at its default - it drives a system gamma ramp that distorts HDR output. If it has already been moved, press Reset Gamma Ramp in the Luma UI.[/]

  []Set Paper White and Peak White to your display, or leave the automatic values.[/]

Set these in the dgVoodoo control panel (dgVoodooCpl.exe, next to the game exe):

• []General tab, Output API: DirectX 11 (feature level 11. 0)[/]

  []DirectX tab, Videocard: GeForce 9800 GT, VRAM: 1024 MB[/]

  []DirectX tab: untick dgVoodoo Watermark to remove the logo from the corner[/]

  FAQ

  • []The game appears dull. Is this even HDR? - By default, Luma is configured to match the vanilla look. From there, you can tweak to your liking: Exposure, Contrast, Saturation, and Highlights Desaturation are in the Grade section.[/]

    []I don't have HDR. Can I use this? - Yes. Set the tonemap type to "SDR" for a clamped vanilla reference; SMAA, sharpening, anisotropic filtering, dithering, and bloom all still apply.[/]

    []How is this any better than other HDR processes? - The rendering pipeline is rewritten and the buffers upgraded from 8-bit to 16-bit float. The HDR image is built from the scene before the game compresses it to SDR, not from the finished SDR frame.[/]

    []Why does it need dgVoodoo? - The game renders in DirectX 9, and Luma supports only DirectX 11 for the moment. dgVoodoo translates it to D3D11, and Luma works on that.[/]

    []Mass Effect is 32-bit. Will it run out of memory? - A stock exe is capped at 2 GB of address space and Luma's own buffers take roughly 365 MB at 4K with everything on. With 4K texture packs on top, Unreal can report a "Rendering thread exception: General protection fault". Community patchers (MEUITM and similar) lift the exe to 4 GB.[/]

    []Can I use it with my ReShade preset? - Effects still work, but anything that grades or tonemaps will fight the HDR path. Add sharpening or grading in Luma instead. Do not run another HDR mod (e.g. RenoDX) alongside it.[/]

  About Luma

  Luma is a DirectX 11 game modding framework built on ReShade's add-on system. It hooks and replaces rendering passes instead of drawing a filter on top, which is how it can add HDR to a game that never had it. Mods for many other games are listed here, and the source code is on GitHub.

  Discord

  HDR Den Discord.

  Credits

  Luma for Mass Effect is developed by DristoforColumb and is open source and free.

  Pumbo and Ersh for the Luma framework, crosire for ReShade and its add-on API, Dege for dgVoodoo2.

  Thanks to the Luma team for the help.