Post-Processing Effects

Post-Processing Effects!

  Our last lecture went over Post-Processing Effects.  Through these effects, you can create different tones, highlights and visuals which add appeal and feeling to your game.  One of these effects which we went over in detail was bloom.  Through bloom, you can brighten up your scene and create a warm toned atmosphere.

  The above image shows the same scene, one with classic rendering, the other with HDR rendering.  with the HDR rendering, you notice the bright areas within your view become brighter.  You also see this hazy, colour seepage within the image.  This is due to you taking the same image, applying different effects to them, and then adding all the effects together.  For bloom, you first take your image and raise the brightness within it, making bright areas even brighter.  Then you take your original scene again, down-sample it to create a blurry, pixelated scene.  Finally, you take your original scene without any HDR rendering down to it, your bright scene and your blurry scene, and you add them together to get a basic bloom effect.  

  We also talked about Cel-shading.

  You achieve cel-shading by creating a range of numbers for colour.  If a value for a pixel falls within a certain value, you output one colour, if it falls within another, you output a different colour.  It works similar to a gradient, and there are no colour blendings between these colours, it is either one colour or another. 

  If a value falls below a certain threshold, you output black.  Finally, you highlight the edges in black, which really pops your scene.  This effect is simple, but can really add character to your game.

  Polishing your game with post-processing effects creates beautiful visuals, and helps distinguish the look of your game.  There are so many things you can do with post-processing, and I look forward to learning more about them.