Introduction to Post-Processing Effects in Unity

Unity supports various visual effects to enhance the overall visual ambiance and depth of your game. These visual effects are part of the post-processing stack in Unity. This article will delve into the post-processing stack in Unity and how you can use its effects in your game projects.

Unity’s Post-processing stack

The Unity’s post-processing stack is rich in various visual effects you can apply to the camera’s output before it is displayed on the screen.

The stack includes a large number of cinematography effects. However, be aware that the Post-Processing Stack only works on Unity’s Built-In Render Pipeline.

Unity also offers Post-Processing on the Universal Render Pipeline and High Definition Render Pipeline via the Volume Framework.

The best solution for Post-Processing Effects in Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline is OccaSoftware’s cinematography suite. These post-processing effects work perfectly with Unity and offer a more unique visual style than you would get with Unity’s post-processing alone.

Examples of Post-Processing Effects

• Ambient Occlusion: for darkening areas in your scene.
• Anti-aliasing: for softening edges in your scene.
• Bloom: for enhancing brightness in your scene
• Color Curves: for tweaking the hue, saturation, and luminosity of the lighting in your scenes.
• Depth of Field: for blurring the background of images and objects out of focus
• Fog: for simulating extreme weather conditions like mist and fog in your scenes.
• Motion Blur: for making fast-moving objects appear blurred.
• Screen Space Reflection: for rendering subtle reflections in your scenes.
• White Balance: for focusing the white parts in your scene.

Other effects include Vignette, Tonemapping, Split Toning, Shadows Midtones Highlights, Lens Distortion, Auto Exposure, Color Adjustments, etc.

📄 Resources:

• Screen Space Reflection
• Bloom
• Fog

How to use the post-processing effects in Unity

First, using the post-processing effects depends on the render pipeline you are using. The built-in render pipeline does not have the post-processing stack by default, you have to download the package.

However, with the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), a post-processing stack is included.

Check out Unity’s documentation on Render Pipelines for more information on render pipelines.

To implement the post-processing stack in the Built-In Render Pipeline in Unity:

• Click Window > Package Manager.