☀️ Pilzprinz God Rays

Volumetric God Rays shader for ReShade. Add beautiful, realistic light shafts to any game — even titles from 2003.

🎮 Built for old games. Works on DirectX 9/10/11, Shader Model 3.0+. Zero external textures. One file, drop it in and go.

✨ What does it do?

Finds the brightest areas in your scene (sun, sky, bright windows, explosions) and casts volumetric light rays from them. The effect is fully screen-space — no scene geometry needed.

🛠️ Features

☀️ Radial God Rays	Screen-space volumetric light scattering based on GPU Gems 3
🎯 Smart Threshold	Soft brightness filter with adjustable knee curve — isolate only the sun or let everything glow
🏔️ Depth Filter	Min depth slider to isolate sky/sun from nearby bright objects (lamps, explosions, HUD)
🎨 Ray Tint	Color picker for warm sunset, cold moonlight, or any custom tone (sRGB-correct)
📐 Configurable Rays	Adjust length, decay, sample count (8–128), exposure
🖥️ HUD Exclusion	Filters out UI elements so health bars don't create god rays
🎬 Blend Modes	Additive (punchy) or Screen (soft, preserves highlights)
🔧 Tonemapping	Built-in Reinhard compression — no overblown whites
✨ Anti-banding	Temporal dithering eliminates visible stepping in gradients
🧹 Half-res + Tent Filter	Renders at half resolution with 9-tap soft upscale — fast AND smooth

⚙️ Settings Guide

Setting	What it does	Recommended
Light Source X/Y	Position of the sun in screen space	Match your scene's sun
Brightness Threshold	Minimum brightness to emit rays	0.6–0.85
Threshold Softness	Smooth vs hard cutoff	0.05–0.15
Min Depth	Filter out nearby objects	0.0 or ~0.95 (sky only)
Ray Length	How far rays extend	0.8–1.5
Decay	Fade-off speed	0.96–0.99
Sample Count	Quality vs FPS	64 (balanced)
Exposure	Ray brightness	0.2–0.5
Blend Mode	Additive (bright) or Screen (soft)	Additive for day, Screen for dusk
Tonemapping	Compress highlights	0.1–0.3

🎮 Tested With

Works with any game that supports ReShade (DirectX 9, 10, 11, OpenGL).

Designed specifically for older titles (2000–2015) that lack built-in volumetric lighting. But works great with modern games too!

📋 Technical Details

• • 3-pass pipeline: Bright Pass → Radial Blur → Compose
• • Half-resolution processing for performance (RGBA16F)
• • sRGB-correct color pipeline throughout
• • Shader Model 3.0 compatible (DX9 games!)
• • No external textures — single .fx file
• • Based on GPU Gems 3, Chapter 13 with significant enhancements

📜 License

Free to use. Credit appreciated but not required. Do not resell.

🐛 Found a bug?

Leave a comment below or reach out. This shader has been through 15 rounds of code review — but I'm always looking to improve!