Clear Skies is a mod for Savage Wind Recomp, the native PC version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It brings over Clarity, the much-loved look from Cemu's Breath of the Wild graphic pack, with all 20 of its presets. You get less haze, less blown-out bloom and richer colour, without changing a single file of Savage Wind.

Download the newest release · Install it · The presets · Help test it

Caution

No game files are included, and none ever will be: not in the code, the releases, the issues or the wiki. Clear Skies doesn't include Savage Wind either. You need your own working copy of Savage Wind, set up with your own game files, dumped from your own Switch. Please don't post game files, dumps, keys or an installed copy here.

Important

Made with AI. Every line of code in Clear Skies, every test, the icon, the banner and this page were written or made by Claude, Anthropic's AI, through Claude Code. A human, devall96, came up with the idea, directs it and plays every build, but no human reviews the code line by line. Who did what has the details. If you don't want to run code written that way, don't run this. As with anything on the internet, you run it at your own risk.

Warning

Early, and tested on one PC. Clear Skies has run in the game on one Windows PC with an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, using Serfrost's preset with HDR off. Every preset is tested automatically on that GPU, but NVIDIA, Intel, HDR output, Linux and Steam Deck haven't been tried yet. Clear Skies doesn't touch your saves, but it's still worth keeping a copy of any you care about.

Note

Not official. Clear Skies is a fan-made mod. It isn't made by, affiliated with or endorsed by the Savage Wind Recomp team, the Cemu team or Nintendo. Please don't report Clear Skies problems to Savage Wind or Cemu: open an issue here instead.

Why this exists

This Clarity port started in a personal, experimental build of Savage Wind, as a proof of concept. Clarity can't be added to Savage Wind itself, and that's fine: Savage Wind doesn't need to be everything to everyone. Clear Skies is for the people who loved Cemu's Clarity and want it back.

So instead of a fork, it's a separate, add-on mod. It works with Savage Wind as it is and keeps up with its updates, it can be turned off by starting the game normally, and it brings every one of Cemu's presets along, not just the three the proof of concept had.

Screenshots

These were taken with Serfrost's preset in a personal, experimental build of Savage Wind, the proof of concept this Clarity port started in. If you take good before-and-after shots with Clear Skies, share them in an issue.

What it adds

The look

• Cemu's Clarity for Breath of the Wild in place of the game's own tone mapping: Clarity GFX by Jamie and Kiri with Crementif
• All 20 presets from Cemu's graphic pack, from Serfrost's recommended preset to Filmic, Survival of the Wild and Hexaae's Clear
• All 65 of Clarity's settings, with the same names as in Cemu's pack, adjustable on top of any preset: bloom, fake HDR, sharpening, ten tone maps, levels, Technicolor, colour matrix, filmic pass, DPX, curves, lift / gamma / gain and vibrance

The launcher

• A small themed window: choose a look, point it at savagewind.exe, press Play
• Remembers your choice, warns you if Savage Wind isn't set up yet, and has command-line options for shortcuts

How it stays out of the way

• Nothing in Savage Wind's folder is changed. Clear Skies runs as a Vulkan layer, switched on only for the game it starts. Start savagewind.exe directly and you get the original look.
• Nothing is installed system-wide. Delete the folder and it's gone.
• Your saves aren't touched. The layer only replaces one shader on its way to your graphics card.
• Works with Savage Wind's updates, as long as the game keeps building that shader the same way (the log tells you if it doesn't)

How to install

1. Have a working Savage Wind first: set up with your game files, and started at least once. For the smoothest first run, also use Precompile shaders in Savage Wind Configuration.
2. Download the newest Clear Skies and unzip the ClearSkies folder anywhere. Its files must stay together.
3. Run ClearSkies.exe, choose a look, click Browse to find your savagewind.exe, and press Play.

From then on, start the game with ClearSkies.exe whenever you want Clarity. To change the look, pick another preset and press Play again: the game needs a restart to switch.

Shortcuts and command line

ClearSkies.exe --play	Start straight away with the saved preset
ClearSkies.exe --preset filmic --play	Choose a preset (it's saved) and start
ClearSkies.exe --game "D:\Savage Wind\savagewind.exe"	Choose the game
ClearSkies.exe -- --config	Anything after -- goes to Savage Wind

Uninstalling: delete the ClearSkies folder. Nothing else was changed.

The presets

preset =	From Cemu's pack
serfrost	Serfrost's Preset (Recommended), the default
serfrost_dim	Serfrost's Preset (Dim Display)
serfrost_bright	Serfrost's Preset (Bright Display)
bruz	Bruz's Preset
cellhunter	CellHunter's Preset
jamie	Jamie's Preset
t3nka	t3nka Neutral+
complaining_gamer	The Complaining Gamer's Preset
viskclarity	ViskClarity Preset
contrasty	Contrasty Preset
filmic	Filmic Preset
sotw_warmer	Silentverge's Survival of the Wild Preset (Warmer)
sotw_colder	Silentverge's Survival of the Wild Preset (Colder)
godot_mexican	Godot's Mexican Preset
hexaae_clear	Hexaae's Clear Preset
maranbr	MaranBr Preset (Little More Intense)
yemaowuxin_bright	YeMaoWuXin's Preset (Bright colors)
yemaowuxin_vivid	YeMaoWuXin's Preset (Vivid and clear)
cobalt	Cobalt's Preset (Saturated & Bright)
custom	User-Defined Preset: Cemu's starting values, for building your own
off	The game's own look

Making your own

clearskies.ini (the launcher's Edit settings button) lists every one of Clarity's settings, using the names from Cemu's pack. Remove the ; in front of a setting to change it on top of the chosen preset:

[clarity]
preset = serfrost
bloomFactor = 0.2
VibranceRGBBalance = 1.0, 1.0, 1.4
Tone_map = 9

Switches are 1 (on) or 0 (off), and colours are three numbers. Tone_map picks the tone map: -1 none, 0 BotW, 1 ReShade, 2 linear, 3 Reinhard, 4 luma Reinhard, 5 white-preserving Reinhard, 6 RomBinDaHouse, 7 filmic, 8 Uncharted 2, 9 ACES. Changes apply the next time the game starts. If a value can't be used, the log says so and that one setting keeps the preset's value.

How it works

Breath of the Wild finishes every frame with one shader. It adds the bloom to the HDR image and tone-maps the result for your screen. On the Wii U, Cemu's Clarity pack replaces that shader. Clear Skies replaces the same shader in Savage Wind:

1. ClearSkies.exe starts savagewind.exe with the Vulkan loader told to load the Clear Skies layer, for that one process only.
2. clearskies_layer.dll sits between the game and the graphics driver and looks at every shader the game creates. It recognises the tone-mapping shader by what's inside it: its two textures, and the constants BotW's tone map uses (the 10000 clamp, the 0.2989 luma weight and −log₂ e).
3. When it finds it, the layer builds Clarity with your preset's settings, using the shader compiler that ships with Savage Wind, and hands that to the driver instead. Every other shader passes through untouched.

The Clarity code itself comes from Cemu's pack: tools/gen_presets.py reads the presets and the shader's functions straight out of Cemu's files (kept unchanged in third_party/cemu), so nothing is retyped by hand. The only changes are what Savage Wind needs: the shader's inputs, the pixel size, and clamps that match the game's own shader (LICENSES.txt lists them).

Troubleshooting

Every run writes clearskies.log next to clearskies.ini. A working run looks like this:

Clear Skies loaded into C:\...\savagewind.exe
preset: serfrost (Cemu's "Serfrost's Preset (Recommended)")
watching shaders on a new Vulkan device
Clarity compiled (32140 bytes of SPIR-V)
Clarity replaces the tone-mapping composite (shader 1)

What you see	What it means
Savage Wind opens its setup screen	That copy of Savage Wind isn't set up yet. Finish its setup, then use Clear Skies.
No log, or no loaded into line	The layer didn't load. Start the game from ClearSkies.exe and keep all of Clear Skies' files together.
failed to compile	A value in clearskies.ini can't be used. The message says which. Remove that line.
Loaded, but never replaces the tone-mapping composite	Your Savage Wind builds that shader differently. Please report it with the log.
Stutters the first time you see places	That's Savage Wind compiling shaders. Run Precompile shaders in Savage Wind Configuration.

Help test it

So far Clear Skies has been tested on one PC, so reports from other hardware are the most useful thing you can send. That goes for NVIDIA and Intel cards, older AMD cards, HDR monitors, laptops, Linux and Steam Deck. Good news helps too: "it works on this card" tells me what works.

To report, open an issue with:

• Your graphics card and driver version
• Which preset, and whether HDR is on in Savage Wind
• clearskies.log from the Clear Skies folder, and savagewind.log from Savage Wind's folder
• A screenshot if something looks wrong

Never attach game files, dumps, keys or saves.

Build it yourself

On Windows you need Zig (a complete C compiler in one download) and Python 3:

git clone https://github.com/devall96/ClearSkies

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File build.ps1 -Zig C:\path\to\zig.exe

This writes the mod to dist\ClearSkies. To test the layer on your own GPU against every preset, point the test at a Savage Wind folder (it uses that folder's libshaderc_shared.dll):

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tests\run_tests.ps1 -SavageWind "C:\Games\Savage Wind"

src/clearskies_layer.c	The Vulkan layer: finds the tone-mapping shader and swaps in Clarity
src/clarity_shader.h	Clarity's inputs and main() for Savage Wind
src/cemu_presets.h	Generated: every preset and Clarity's functions, from Cemu's files
src/launcher.c	ClearSkies.exe
tools/gen_presets.py	Generates cemu_presets.h and clearskies.ini from third_party/cemu
tools/make_icon.py, tools/make_banner.ps1	Draw the icon and this page's banner
tests/	The layer test, run on a real GPU

Who did what

devall96, the human: the idea, the name, what it should and shouldn't do, testing in the game, and deciding what stays.

Claude (Anthropic's AI, Claude Opus 5.5 through Claude Code): all of the code, the tests, the preset generator, the icon and banner (drawn by scripts), the license research and this page. That includes porting Cemu's Clarity shader to Savage Wind and working out how to recognise the game's tone-mapping shader. No human has reviewed the code line by line.

Cemu's graphic pack authors: Clarity itself and every preset. Savage Wind and its contributors: everything Clear Skies builds on.

Credits

• Clarity from the Cemu graphic packs (CC0 1.0): Clarity GFX by Jamie (main code) and Kiri (code and ReShade logic), with Crementif. Presets by Serfrost, Bruz, CellHunter, Jamie, t3nka, The Complaining Gamer, Visk, Silentverge, Godot, Hexaae, MaranBr, YeMaoWuXin and Cobalt. Contrasty, Filmic and the User-Defined starting values come with the pack without a named creator. Several passes are ports of ReShade effects, as they appear in the pack.
• Savage Wind Recomp by Revivedx and contributors, built on LAS Recomp by Peiikai (MIT). Not included: Clear Skies works with your own copy.
• The banner's lettering is Fira Sans by the Mozilla Foundation and Telefónica (SIL Open Font License 1.1, third_party/fonts/FiraSans).
• The few Vulkan declarations the layer needs follow the Khronos Vulkan-Headers (Apache-2.0 or MIT). Vulkan is a registered trademark of the Khronos Group Inc.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is © Nintendo. Nintendo Switch and The Legend of Zelda are trademarks of Nintendo. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo.

License

Clear Skies' own code is under the MIT License. Material from others keeps its own license: Cemu's Clarity pack is CC0 1.0 and Fira Sans is OFL 1.1. LICENSES.txt has the full list, including exactly what was adapted.