Volumetric fog, night lights, sun and moon shafts, and living water for the World of Warcraft 3.3.5a client.

Lumenveil is a free, open-source graphics mod for the Windows client of World of Warcraft, version 3.3.5a (build 12340). You copy a few files next to Wow.exe, and the game you already have gets drifting fog that settles in valleys, light shafts through trees, lamps and torches that light the world around them at night, and water that moves with the wind.

It draws on top of the game's own picture. It contains no game files, textures or models, and it changes none of the game's files.

Press Ctrl+F12 in the game to switch Lumenveil off and on and see the difference for yourself.

Each pair is the same moment with Lumenveil switched off (left) and on (right), using its compare key (Ctrl+F12). Weather, clouds and creatures can move a little between the two shots. The client they were taken on also runs the Project Reforged HD texture and model packs and the ReShade preset described in docs/RESHADE.md, in both shots of each pair, so the left shot is not quite the game as it ships.

About half of the pairs were taken with a newer development build, which also draws the land beyond the view distance; that part is not in release 0.1.0.

Before (Lumenveil off)	After (Lumenveil)

18 more pairs at night

Before (Lumenveil off)	After (Lumenveil)

Before (Lumenveil off)	After (Lumenveil)

13 more pairs at dusk, dawn and day

Before (Lumenveil off)	After (Lumenveil)

How the screenshots were taken is in docs/screenshots/README.md. The game's art in them belongs to Blizzard Entertainment.

• Fog you can walk through. Layers of haze, ground mist and distance fog, marched per pixel in 3D. Banks of fog lie on the ground and pool in valleys and over lakes, drift with the wind, thicken in rain, and lift off the ground at dawn. Dry zones get warm dust, green ones a humid haze.
• Sun and moon shafts. Light shafts through trees, buildings and mountains, also from a sun or moon outside the picture. What the camera has seen is remembered, so the shafts don't flicker at the edge of the screen.
• Night lights. Lamps, torches, braziers, candles and lit windows placed in the world light the ground, walls, plants and characters around them in their own colour, with shadows, and glow in the fog. Towns stay visible from far away at night. Nights are darker than in the plain game, so the lights matter.
• Spell light. Spells, enchants and glowing projectiles light their surroundings.
• Water. Waves that follow the wind and the weather, reflections that stay put as you turn, sun glitter, rings where rain hits the water, ripples around you, and lamps reflected at night.
• Wet surfaces (off in the shipped settings; switch on in Ctrl+F7). In rain, stone and soil darken and shine and puddles mirror the torches; grass doesn't turn into a mirror.
• Relief (off in the shipped settings; switch on in Ctrl+F7). Depth on building walls, floors and models, from height maps the mod makes in the game from your own textures.
• A look for each zone. 37 zones are tuned by hand for dawn, day, dusk and night, in clear weather, rain, snow and sandstorms. Everywhere else uses the global look.
• A longer view. The view distance on the old continents is lifted, and the distance fog follows it.
• In-game settings. Every effect has a slider in the settings window (Ctrl+F7), and changes show at once.

• Windows 10 or 11.
• The 3.3.5a client, build 12340, any language. Lumenveil checks the client's code before it attaches and stays off on any other build.
• A graphics card with Direct3D 9 and pixel shader 3.0 support. The effects are heavy: a recent mid-range card is recommended, and every effect can be turned down.
• Memory: the 3.3.5a client is a 32-bit program. A very long view distance uses more of its memory; if the game runs out, see docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md.

1. Download the latest Lumenveil-<version>.zip from the Releases page. If your antivirus warns about it, see Antivirus warnings for how to check the files.
2. Open the zip and drag everything in it into your game folder, the one that holds Wow.exe.
3. Double-click Lumenveil-Setup.cmd once. It reads your own game files and writes where the world's lamps and water are (lampdata.bin, liquiddata.bin). This takes one to five minutes and is only needed once.
4. Start the game as you always do.

To uninstall, double-click Lumenveil-Uninstall.cmd, or delete the files listed in docs/INSTALL.md. Details, and using Lumenveil with other graphics mods, are in docs/INSTALL.md.

Lumenveil works with ReShade, which then adds its effects on top of Lumenveil's. The screenshots above were taken with ReShade on DXVK and a preset of SMAA anti-aliasing and FakeHDR, with ambient occlusion and a light grade on Ctrl+F10. docs/RESHADE.md describes that setup, includes the preset, and explains how to install ReShade with Lumenveil.

Every key can be changed in CoAVolFog.ini. The settings are explained in docs/SETTINGS.md.

Lumenveil only changes what your own screen shows. It sends nothing over the network, reads no account data, plays nothing for you and shows nothing the game hides, and it changes none of the game's files. To draw its effects it does attach to the running game: it wraps the game's Direct3D device and redirects a few of the client's drawing calls in memory.

Any change to the game client may be against the terms that apply to you or the rules of the service you connect to, and anti-cheat software may detect it. Read those terms first. Lumenveil doesn't hide from or get around any anti-cheat or protection. It comes with no warranty, and you use it at your own risk.

Lumenveil is code only. It contains no files from the game, no part of its program code, and nothing converted from them: no textures, models, maps or game tables. The data it needs about the world (where the lamps and water are) is made on your own computer from your own copy of the game by Lumenveil-Setup.cmd, and never leaves it. It doesn't include the game and doesn't say where to get it. See LEGAL.md.

Please don't attach game files, or data made from them, to issues or pull requests.

Lumenveil is built on CoAVolFog by jealous-sound, the volumetric fog renderer for the 3.3.5a client, released under the GNU GPL v2. The night lights, water, relief, wet surfaces, regions and much more were added on top of it; engine/CHANGES.md lists the changed files. The lamp colour and flicker rules are ported from Everwood (MIT). The settings window uses Dear ImGui (MIT), and the setup tool reads the game's archives with libmpq (GPL v2), zlib and bzip2. Full notices are in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.

The before-and-after screenshots were taken with the HD texture and model packs of Project Reforged, made by its community of modders and artists. They are a separate project and are not included in Lumenveil.

Lumenveil is free software under the GNU General Public License v2. The complete source code of every release, the third-party code built into it included, is in this repository; docs/BUILDING.md explains how to build it.

Lumenveil is an independent, non-commercial fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Blizzard Entertainment. World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. The names are used only to say which game client Lumenveil works with.