• Bannerlord’s in-game exposure slider needs to be centered.
• ReShade – a free program which “reshades” games.
• A Patreon account – free to make.
• A Discord account — also free to make.
• Both your Patreon and Discord need to be connected, see here for how to do that.
• And finally, ‘$5.00 USD’ or the equivalent, for iMMERSE Pro. Patreon is a subscription service, but you only need to pay once. After which, once you’re finished downloading the ‘.zip’, you can cancel the subscription immediately and still retain use of the ‘.fx’ files.
  

Who is this for & by whom?
I am Horseapple. Renowned music producer, writer, and YouTuber. I have a massive 190 subscribers. As part of a big project (i.e. a lore accurate 3:30:00 M&B film, and online encyclopedia) I’ve developed this ReShade preset.

This shader is for those who don’t just want a cinematic experience – but also – a gameplay friendly one too. Not too bright, and not too dark – this shader has been fine tuned to adapt on the fly. 

What is this?
As mentioned before, “AAA Graphics Mod” is a ReShade preset, It utilizes Pascal Gilcher’s iMMERSE Pro ‘.fx’ as well as a couple others from ReShade’s installation repositories. This preset comes with Ray Tracing, Lens Flares, Better In-Game Lighting (Especially at Night), More Bloom, HDR, and much more

The download also has a user-friendly ‘Installation Guide.pdf’ attached that breaks down a step-by-step procedure to installing the preset. It provides tons of examples like photos or videos. 

Additionally, the ‘.pdf’ covers how to separate Ui elements from the shader. The health bar and scorecard can now be legible. Whoo!

Why make this?
The work on this preset began after the Encyclopaedia Calradica started which itself sprang off from a lack of credible wikis on the Mount & Blade series. The problem is they were either out of date or incomplete. Because of this, for the sake of the film I decided to produce, which is a re-imagining of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s campaign whose new storyline I want to be as lore accurate as possible, I began the encyclopedia.

Thereof, this preset was created to prettify the photos used in the encyclopedia, and subsequently, the film itself.

When & where did you get the idea?
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s lighting is pretty good in my opinion. Especially at sunset where the light shafts and color is most prevalent inside in-game scenes. But for the film and photos accompanying the Encyclopaedia Calradica, I wanted the game’s graphics to be more cinematic. I wanted a broader dynamic range that is simultaneously darker in the shadows but equally more legible; more detail. I wanted much of the same for the highlights. 

I learned of ReShade from “Cinematic ReShade by jan1morant” which was the very first preset I’ve tried. This preset is great and well-made, but for my own tastes and preferences I chose to develop my own ReShade preset.

I couldn’t assign an exact date of when I first began messing around with ReShade, maybe around February 23, 2024 which is the oldest ReShade preset I’ve made for Bannerlord. To guesstimate, the search to develop and create an adaptive – all-encompassing and compact/FPS preserving preset for Bannerlord has taken 9 months. 

9 months to figure out how to make this preset as responsive to light, as deep and colorful, as modern as it is today.

How was this made?
This preset was tuned using all of ReShade’s shader repositories, as well as Pascal Gilcher’s $5.00 USD iMMERSE Pro ‘.fx’. Moreover, Bannerlord’s in-game exposure slider needs to be centered.

Below is a short, 30 second video showing all the shader layers in action, one-by-one which are all used to acquire the look. Moreso, (latest [v#.#]’s) showcase video can be found on this page too, as well as under the ‘Media’ tab, along with all previous iterations of this preset.

For a more in-depth and technical breakdown, check out: https://guides.martysmods.com/