Proper Shaders 04-26 (public access)
(old version from April, much has been improved since then)
Note: due to license, Cloudworks (from June version) is already added to this update too!
Update: April version, with all fixes, visual and stability improvements I did for the whole month, and, mainly, HBAO, soft blurred shadows and global vehicle reflections. Keep following comments and Discord for more updates for next days.
No time to record a new video and so. I prefer to add more features before doing a new video (very soon this month I'll add the water shader Jéssica is helping).
Keep with the old premiere post:
The second version of a mod that revolutionizes the graphics of GTA San Andreas.
New short video: https://youtu.be/ywMmVQ7pgTk
Video from last month (the shadows have been improved drastically):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uCiIDZdUNE
With the goal of stability, compatibility, and optimization, this is a graphics mod that's actually playable, for gameplay, not just for taking screenshots.
Well integrated into the game (e.g., separate values for day and night), non-intrusive and highly customizable, similar to my MixSets mod: if you don't enable anything in the .ini file, this mod will do practically nothing to your game. There are no minimum requirements; if you want, you can use it only for soft particles and fix z-fighting - you have total control.
This is a proprietary mod; not a preset or modpack!
You're not on a Patreon page from those people that just edit .ini files from a mod (like ENB, ReShade, RenderHook etc) and share them to make money off of it for years, even without updates. This mod is being created by me - If you're stumbled upon this and you don't know me, I'm the owner of MixMods, the largest GTA website in Latin America; I've been creating mods for GTA San Andreas for 15 years (any game mod for 22 years), and I'm the modder who has created the most technical GTA mods in the world.
Why this is big?
Until yesterday, the only person in the world who had created something like this for GTA San Andreas was petrgeorgievsky (not counting the MTA:SA shader framework), but both SA::Render and RenderHook never became complete and stable because, in my view, the project was worked on from top to bottom (recreating parts of the game's rendering, and the rest of the work was limited to fixing bugs), instead of bottom to top (taking the original, functional game rendering and only enhancing it, without reinventing the wheel). Furthermore, this mod uses some patches (like PS2 pipeline) and best practices from SkyGfx, and is even partially compatible with it.
What can you expect from this version?
Even though the goal is stability, compatibility, optimization etc, we're still talking about the first alpha test version, so expect something not totally functional yet, as there's still a lot of work to be done (I worked on it for only 3 weeks yet! With some helps from Jéssica Natália). Read the Readme file in the download, as it contains all the warnings about potential problems. I still have to work every day on my GTA-like game "IMPUNES", I'm very busy, so I can only work on Patreon for a little over a week a month (usually the last week), but I still intend to fix critical bugs at any time, and I always reply on supporters' Discord server and Patreon helping people.
Current progress
Dynamic 4 cascaded per-pixel shadows (NVIDIA's PCSS)
Shadow mask technique with gaussian blur option
Ambient oclusion (SSAO, HBAO)
HDR simulation with tonemapping (ACES or Timoty)
Auto exposure
Bloom
Sun rays
SMAA
Simple dithered sky shader
New horizon fog
Improved z-fighting
Soft particles
Player mipmapping (automatic)
Shaders lit by directional light
Stochastic procedural texturing
Animated wind shader
Support for unlimited TXDPs (TXD parents) files in .ide files, which helps this (shadermaps) and other texture mods.
All 11+ thousand game textures are already configured with proper values for roughness, stochastic and shadows casting.
In progress
Deferred rendering
Per-pixel lighting
Volumetric clouds
PBR sky shader with sky blend
Roughness mapping
Ambient occlusion mapping
Normal mapping
Metallic mapping
Water surface
Underwater
Decals projector (replacing the vanilla decals system, from CPU to GPU)
Screen space reflections
Planned
Lens flare
Volumetric height fog
Screen space global illumination
World rain surface
Vehicle rain surface
Parallax occlusion mapping
Specular anisotropic hair
Subsurface scattering
Advanced car paint and dirt
Temporal anti-aliasing
Improve wind/vegetation shader
Terrain splat maps shader
Download version 04-26. For beta supporters on 01.05.26 (DD.MM.YY) and 01.06.26 for the public. Possible bug fixes will be updated in the same post (check comments and Discord).
Sharing is prohibited until specific dates.
Comments (25)
07-26 the day after tomorrow? ♥
sir, Can you help me fix this crash? [Error: 0x007F5A3A Problem 1: If you have "0x006A2C29" in the "Backtrace" at the end of the log: Bad modeling of some vehicle. Solution 1: Try to find out which vehicle and uninstall it.] This is my Mixmod Crash Log: [GTA SA 1.0.0.0 US Unhandled exception at 0x007F5A3A in gta_sa.exe (+0x3f5a3a): 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x00000000. Register dump: EAX: 0x00000000 EBX: 0x00000048 ECX: 0x00040000 EDX: 0x00000000 EDI: 0x00000048 ESI: 0x06666654 EBP: 0x00000001 EIP: 0x007F5A3A ESP: 0x0177F128 EFL: 0x00210202 CS: 0x00000023 SS: 0x0000002B GS: 0x0000002B FS: 0x00000053 ES: 0x0000002B DS: 0x0000002B Stack dump: 0x0177F128: 00000000 00000048 00000000 00000048 007F5BF6 00000048 0x0177F140: 00C97BBC 00000003 00000001 00C4B958 00000003 0080E485 0x0177F158: 00000018 00000003 00C9AB38 0177F18C 00C9AB34 00000000 0x0177F170: 0667F924 00000138 00000000 00000001 00000003 00C4D958 0x0177F188: 00000018 00000000 00000004 00000001 00805769 066812F8 0x0177F1A0: 00C9BC50 052388F8 01A248FC 007EF657 0667F924 01A248FC 0x0177F1B8: 00000000 0523891C 00000052 0070AE2D 0070AE47 00000003 0x0177F1D0: 00C4B958 00000003 04EE8600 04EE8600 0177F2DC 04EE8B00 0x0177F1E8: 06E6C370 00000021 450DDEDB C4AE28A3 5F000004 00000020 0x0177F200: C4AE79E9 00000078 0000006A 00000020 05238BC0 00000069 base: 0x01580000 top: 0x0177F128 bottom: 0x01780000 Backtrace (may be wrong): =>0x007F5A3A _RwD3D9DynamicVertexBufferCreate+0x3a in gta_sa.exe (+0x3f5a3a) (0x0177F134) 0x007F5BF6 _RwD3D9DynamicVertexBufferLock+0xe6 in gta_sa.exe (+0x3f5bf6) (0x0177F150) 0x0080E485 Imm3dRenderPipeline+0x215 in gta_sa.exe (+0x40e485) (0x0177F194) 0x00805769 _RxPipelineExecute+0x59 in gta_sa.exe (+0x405769) (0x0177F1A8) 0x007EF657 _RwIm3DRenderIndexedPrimitive+0x107 in gta_sa.exe (+0x3ef657) (0x01A248FC) ] and Here's my Proper Shader Log: Version Build: Jun 02 2026 04:22:56 2026-06-12 19:33:28 f0 | ==== Proper Shaders by MixMods.com.br ==== 2026-06-12 19:33:28 f0 | Proper Shaders mod enabled 2026-06-12 19:33:28 f0 | Logging Enabled Level 1: Only errors will be logged. 2026-06-12 19:33:28 f0 | Using D3D9 Proxy, required for lots of features. Disable it in ProperShaders.ini if conflicts with other mod. 2026-06-12 19:33:28 f0 | Using Z/depth buffer. Better shader compatibility, but no MSAA support (use SMAA antialiasing instead). 2026-06-12 19:33:28 f0 | Using reversed Z/depth buffer. Requires proxy. This improves z-fighting a lot (very close faces flicking), but other graphic mods like ReShade must toggle reversed zbuffer to be compatible, otherwise you will see some rendering order issues. 2026-06-12 19:33:28 f0 | Using lit map pipeline. 2026-06-12 19:33:28 f0 | Using lit vehicle pipeline. 2026-06-12 19:33:28 f0 | Using lit skin pipeline. 2026-06-12 19:35:58 f0 E!| Shadows: UseBlur requires UseShadowMask enabled.
Find which mod is causing this and tell here. Are you sure this is caused by Proper Shaders?
Fala Junior, talvez nas próximas versões já tenha sido corrigido, porém eu tive algumas incompatibilidades, não consegui rodar ele com o ProperFixes (tenho o RoSA, então eu uso também o ProperFixes pro RoSA), não sei se aqui é o lugar certo pra repostar isso também, mas venho testando o mod, se quiser um feedback mais profundo, me dá um alô.
Explique o que aconteceu. As imagens são literalmente usando Proper Fixes e RoSA.
there is an issue in public version. there is an aliasing problem on electric lines in default preset. but i have tried another preset (normal-medium). there is no issue in second preset. you can see differences in this link https://postimg.cc/187Hgpz2
In this one my gta v vegetation mod gets undercovered by the clouds and can you somehow like make it work with vehicle rendering mods so the crash parts arent green anymore?
The Proper Shader Mod by April is awesome compared to the previous versions, especially the sky and cloud effects. I really like it. However, I found a problem. Many PED mods, such as those from Fadxploit and Alan 74, do not seem to work properly with PED.IFP animations. The characters do not animate correctly; instead, they just float around with their arms spread out. I am using an older and free version of the shader mod, so I am not sure whether this issue has been fixed in the newer versions.
bro the mod doesn't work for me, i install everything in a clean gta with just the asi loader and the essentials mod pack that you also recommend to install too and nothing doesn't work, help me man give what can i do?
Just saying "doesn't work" is the same as saying nothing, you need to explain, send infos.
May I ask if you have any plans for a headlight rework or a wider headlight illumination feature in Proper Shaders? I really like Skyline’s night atmosphere, but I still wish vehicle headlights could illuminate a much larger area, especially when driving in dark rural areas. I tried changing the related parameters in MixSets and ECG, but it didn’t really help.
Well, I literally showed this yesterday on Discord (supporter's and MixMods' servers), real dynamic per-pixel lighting for next version.
Very strange, but the latest version for me breaks the player's camera while on foot. It's fine in interiors, but exiting any interior results in the player being controlled from the first person for some reason. It's like the actual player model remains near the interior door, but the camera that follows my movement is from the first person. Driving in vehicles seems fine, though. It could be some incompatibility with other camera mods. I'll let you know if I find anything. However, the previous version did not have this issue for me with the same mod setup. Can also confirm it's the .asi file that affects this, not anything else in the mod (textures, shaders, ini, etc.)
Grinch trailer incompatibility was confirmed, causing this. I may add a warning detecting if this mod is installed. It also causes other visual bugs too. For some reason, that mod is very incompatible with mods related to DirectX (RenderHook, MoonLoader). Grinch need to fix it.
Joguei por uns 15 min. Performance sofre um impacto bem relativo (provável com as sombras - estava usando preset alto). Crash após os 15 min.
Envie o log do crash. Mas você é literalmente a única pessoa que disse isso, ninguém mais tem esse problema, então é algo do seu jogo. Identifique e diga aqui.
Updated: More game objects now receive the mod's shaders (including objects with reflections, such as some buildings in Las Venturas and paintings in CJ's house with Proper Fixes). Bugs in shadows without "ReversedDepthBuffer" enabled have also been fixed.
is it normal for my game to freeze for solid 5 seconds or more when loading bar is finished loading full
It does happen to me as well, I think it's normal
Hi, I have a suggestion/question: is there a way to do a fade out for the shadows when the sunset is over, because right now around 18:45 ingame the shadows just shift to the default noon position, the same goes for MaxDistanceNightMult. I use the 24h timecyc btw. awesome mod, another step closer to the real definitive edition
You mean fade-in not fade-out? I checked here, for some reason now the moon shadows are not fading-in, it just pops, I'll fix later. I also would love to improve the sun sky position, because the sunset is around 21:00 but the sun disappears from the sky even before 19:00 which makes no sense.
I've got a question Junior. For me this is the best mod created ever but, Is it possible that someday can be added raytracing reflection? For example like Renderhook with the vehicle lights or emergency lights?
No, raytracing is overkill, people don't like to use not even on triple-A engines, now imagine a 2004 engine as a mod. Raytracing is totally unnecessary.
Updated: Free FPS: The "ShadowMask" has now been highly optimized; smooth shadows with blur are now faster. Several issues with vehicle reflections have been fixed. Settings for vehicle reflections have been added. The default .ini file now uses shadows with blur (with depth pre-pass).
Updated: Hotfixes to fix some important bugs, specifically with the depth pre-pass (bug with SkyGfx, square Moon and some things with transparency, like the BMX wheel)