Boost up your Game with Post Processing in Unity!
Now that we have covered how to set up post-processing for your project, it is time to see how it can boost the overall feel and look of the game.
Many different effects can be applied to your game via post-processing - and playing around with all of them takes a lot of time, tweaking, and calibrating to get that remarkable result, but it is very much worth it!
I have decided to use four different effects:
- Vignette
This effect darkens the edges of the screen. I have decided to use this effect since enemies nor the powerups can spawn there - to focus the player more on the center of the screen.
- Grain
This effect adds visual noise to the game, something like an old TV. I liked how this effect looked, so I decided to use it as well- although, as you can see in the gif lower, it is a very subtle change.
- Color Grading
Color Grading is the process of altering or correcting the color and luminance of the final image. You can think of it as applying filters in Photoshop. - this is the most visible change of the game, but I wanted to add a slightly darker and more cold feel to the game.
- Bloom
This effect is probably the most popular one - It enhances the lighter portions of the image, giving them a bright, glowing look. I wanted to add a little bit of light where it should be to adjust the darker effect from the ‘Color Grading.’
I was also considering adding Chromatic Abberation - This effect mimics the effect a real-world camera produces when its lens fails to join all colors to the same point. I might use this effect in the future since it reminded me a little bit of some wormhole drive.
Effects that I have not used due to this being a 2D game with a static camera, but will briefly explain:
- Lens Distortion - This effect simulates the shape of a real-world camera lens by distorting or undistorting the final rendered picture.
- Ambient Occlusion - This effect adds shadows to areas that are not directly affected by ambient light. It darkens creases, holes, intersections, and surfaces close to each other.
- Auto Exposure - This effect mimics how the human eye adjusts to varying levels of darkness. It dynamically and gradually adjusts the exposure of an image according to the range of brightness levels the image contains.
- Depth of Field - This effect blurs objects in the foreground or background, depending on the focus point.
- Motion Blur - This effect blurs an image when GameObjects are moving faster than the camera’s exposure time. Similar to how you try to take a picture of a fast-moving vehicle in real life.
- Screen Space Reflections - It is a technique for reusing screen space data to calculate reflections. It is used to create reflections on wet floor surfaces etc.
- Anti-Aliasing - This option is set on the ‘Camera’ in the ‘Post-Process Layer’ component. It helps eliminate the jagged edges of objects by surrounding them with pixels with shades of color.
But that is it for now, thank you for reading and feel free to follow me for more articles - and as always, good luck and see you next time!
