My journey becoming a Unity game developer: Make a game look beautiful-URP & Post Processing pt.2
Objective: Using more Global Volume effects such as Shadows Midtones Highlights, Vignette, Film Grain, Depth of Field, Lens Distortion, and Chromatic Abberation to show how we can enhance our scene.
Shadows Midtones Highlights effects separately controls the shadows, midtones, and highlights of the render using a tonal range. Tonal range describes quality of color and tone within an image, ranging from the number of shades between the lightest and darkest colored areas of an image.
There are limits to the Shadow and Highlights. The Shadow Start and End points are the transition between the shadows and the midtones of the render. On the other hand, the Highlights Start and End points are the transition between the midtones and the highlights of the render.
Vignette effects darkens and/or desaturates towards the edges of an image compared to the center. This is perfect for drawing attention to the center of an image.
Use Color to set the color of the vignette. Use Center to set the vignette center point. Use Intensity to set the strength of the vignette effect. Use Smoothness to set the smoothness of the vignette borders. Use Rounded to make the vignette perfectly round when the checkbox is enabled. If not enabled, the vignette will match the shape on the current aspect ratio.
Film Grain effects simulates the random small particles being present on physical film. Type uses the drop-down to select the type of grain to use. You can select from a list of presets that HDRP includes, or select Custom to provide your own grain texture. Intensity sets the strength of the Film Grain effect. Response sets the noisiness response curve with the higher value resulting in less noise in the brighter areas.
Depth of Field effects simulates the focus properties of a camera lens with the focus sharply on an object at a specific distance. Objects nearer or farther from the camera are out of focus. This blurring gives a visual cue about an object’s distance using Bokeh. Bokeh refers to graphical imperfections that appear around bright areas of the image as they fall out of focus.
Use Focus Distance to set the distance to the focus point from the Camera. Use Focal Length to set the distance between the lens and the film with larger values resulting in a shallower depth of field. Aperture is the same as Focal Length using distance, but the smaller the value is results in the shallower the depth of field is. There are 3 more settings named Blade Count, Blade Curvature, and Blade Rotation controls Aperture Blades or the Iris effecting the opening of a lens’s diaphragm through which light passes.
Lens Distortion effects distorts the final rendered picture to simulate the shape of a real-world camera lens. Intensity is used to set the overall strength of the distortion effect. X and Y Multipliers is used to set the distortion intensity along their axes. Center is used to set the center point of the distortion effect on the screen. Scale is used to set the value for global screen scaling which zooms in and out the render to hide the borders of the screen.
This is Lens Distortion effects shown in Game view mode which allows us to see these effects with the other effects even better in particular Vignette.
Chromatic Aberration creates fringes of color along boundaries that separate dark and light parts of the image. Intensity sets the strength of the Chromatic Aberration effect using values ranging between 0 and 1. Zero disables the effect and the higher values creates more intense effects.
This is the final results of using around half of the different effects from the Global Volume Post Processing effects list. As we see these effects can be great to use for characters who are coming out of an unconscious state, or under the influence of a substance in their system, or just got their head rocked, or recreating a scene from past memories. Play around with these settings because there is no definitive setting to get the best results you’re looking to produce in your game.
