C13 AEGIS 2.26 - Long Live The King

I guess at some point I need to step back, take stock and be a little cocky. In my humble opinion, nothing comes close to the consistently amazing visuals that C13 AEGIS provides. Is a huge part of that personal bias and love for my own baby? You bet your ass it is. Is it also probably true? Also yes.

But let's at least take a minute to go over why we're all here. The changelog! (That's why you're reading this right? right?)

So I guess we can breeze over the massive changes that have taken place since the release of 2.06. There have been many releases in between, available in the Discord. If you're a patron who has not yet connected their accounts, or simply doesn't have a Discord account, do shoot me a dm, we'll figure something out. But yes, changelog.

The big one:
- Rewrote the entire tone mapping from essentially scratch.

The good old c13 mapper has served us well, but after many a surgical implantation of many-a new feature, it was becoming too much of a hassle to manage. The main problem with it was of a PEBKAC nature, but seeing as i don't really have the time to go back to school for these things, a more immediately manageable approach was necessary. The bad news? My custom deluxe ultra special curve math is dead. The good news? A solid step forward in my ability to fine tune the tone mapping and getting it where i need it, when i need it.

What does this change for you? Surprisingly little. There's marginally better highlight control, though that still hinges strongly on the glare preset used. Theres much better saturation control throughout the range, and yellows are finally properly yellow throughout, no black magic nonsense necessary. The Spectre for reference.

And the rest of the changelog?
Well, it's mostly full of boring details about fine tunning the world parameters to work well with the new mapper. Here's the things you NEED to know:

1. Use LCS. There is a 2.20 era Gamma script included, but please. Just use LCS
2. Default Color profile has been renamed Camera, and the new default is called True Neutral. It's sexy. You'll like it. Oh and Color Sepia is gone. lmk if you miss it.
3. Power of the Sun has a strong style effect now.
on:

off:

Some people like their shadows deep, some like them balanced. Pick a side, check a box, and be good to go.

Glare has also seen a rework from previous versions, here's the main things to be aware of:
- AEGIS Spec has seen a move towards GT, due to the new world lighting setup not requiring as much glare muckery
- GT has seen a notable reduction in severity at night, making it nice and pleasant
- use gentle if you miss the old school AEGIS Spec.

Oh, also the entire Pure PP UI is now organised neatly in tabs! How bout that!


Some minor things that you won't notice are fixes to how some Impact vision logic works, and stuff like that.

Bottom line, this is peak for now, can't wait to see where the future takes us.

Now, in all seriousness, what a trip making C13 AEGIS has been. And who knows where the future might take us. Dear Patreon supporters, what joy you have brought to my life, by supporting a passion project. From the bottom of my heart thank you. I'll have a dl link ready in a separate post asap.

oh, here's a secret glimpse of a couple of C13 Publishing projects, just for a tease. Coming soon! (Right behind The Spectre)

Paid attention to the trailer?
❤️