Post Processing Effects

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Last updated 1 month ago

Post Processing Effects

The plugin that applies post effects in your viewport window

Effects

Here is an original test scene, that I'm going to apply build-in effects one by one

Effect

image

Description

Color Correction

Tweak image contrast, brightness, gamma
Invert the image colors
Hue and saturation
Chromatic abberation
Bloom effect

Displacement

an animated wave distortion effect

Depth of Field (DOF)

A depth of field effect

Film Grain

Animated film grain effect

Fish Eye

Fish eye distortion of the image

Lens Flare

Lens flare with a possibility to connect 3d scene lights as a source position for the effect. There is an additional feature of 3d occlusion for the effect.

Motion Blur (Camera)

Based on previous and current camera transforms, blur based on a camera movement

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)

micro shadowing

Vignetting

a vignetting effect

How To Start

The effects could be applied only in a camera view.

In order to apply effects, you have to create a post process user object which contains all properties. You can do that from Assets Browser or from the Post Process Tool. In Assets Browser the user object is located in Assets / Templates / Shading Elements

Here you can active the desired effects and the whole effect system in order to see the result in real-time in the viewport.

Supported drag'n'drop operations

if you drag camera / light / null, they will connected into Data Camera / Lens Flare Light / DOF Focus Object
if you drag one post process user object into another, the values from on object will be copied into another one
if Camera is assigned in a correspondent property of a post process object, then post processing effect become a local, just for a specified camera
Post procesing effect applies only on user camera and skip any system camera and Perspective as well
Better to not combine Camera Effects (Antialiasing, Depth Of Field) with post processing effects For Antialiasing better to use render option. BUT the option conflicts with Reflection shader, so you will not see reflections!

Default Configuration

Default values for the properties are stored in My Documents \ MB \ 20xx-x64 \ config

Name of a configuration file is < PC Name >.PostProcessing.txt

Python tool to tweak post effects properties.

Effects Common Notes

DOF and SSAO and any other effect which is using depth buffer could be sensible to camera near/far planes
GLSL Shader stores value in single float precision, so please take care about too big values for the camera far plane

DOF

In DOF Effect you can manually specify a focal distance.

If Null is assigned in the Focus Object Property, Focal distance will be computed automatically.

When Use Camera DOF Properties is on, then Focal Distance and Focal Range will be taken from Camera Real-Time effects

To increase a quality of DOF, try to insrease values for Samples and Rings

Lens Flare

You can apply effect for any amount of 3d lights in the scene from their world positions.

If you don't use Flare Light list, then manually define PosX and PosY which are percent of screen size (width and height)

Flare Light is list of 3d scene lights where every world space position of a light is going to be converted into screen space position and lens flare effect is applied.

Flare Use Occlusion and Flare Occlusion Objects defines the process of render 3d scene models into special mask that is going to cover the 2d effect of lens flare.

Post Effects and HUD

The post effects modify the final image, where HUD elements are draw as part of it. In order to recover original HUD, the post process plugin has special feature to emulate the HUD drawing on top of post processed image. That is not a full 100% replication of MotionBuilder HUD system, but it covers most of needs with printing out text, rectangles.

Masking

There are 4 masks supported per each post process. A special FX Masking shader can be used to define what models are going on which mask.

In post processing we could define a global mask use, that means that we are going to mask out the whole post processing image. Or we could apply masking per effect, as every effect has option "Use Masking" and "Masking Channel"

Debug Display Masking option can be used to visualize a rendered mask in the viewport. With white color we should have objects that are rendered inside the mask.

FX Masking shader

The shader to append on the model (don't use it as a main shader). It gives a hint to post processing to render connected models to a specific mask texture.

In the properties of the shader you can define on which mask texture the model is going to be rendered.

Masking Properties

Invert Mask - inverse white/black on the rendered mask
Blur Mask - apply a guassian blur on the mask texture where Blur Mask Scale controls the amplification of a blur
Use Rim and Rim Power - That is useful especially when geometry is rounded and could add additional feather effect of a mask. Could be used together with mask blur.
Mask Mix With - This is an operation to subtract one mask from another. For example, if you have a haze effect rendered with masked displacement and you want to make an occlusion of such effect from a foreground objects in the scene. You can render haze generator object into MaskA, occlusion models into MaskB and then define MaskA to Mix with MaskB.

Mask Mix Test Scene - MB_Scene/texture_flames_and_HazeEffectWithOcclusion.fbx

Additional features of the plugin

stream view image via UDP socket (used for virtual camera communication), was designed for a Google Tango tablet - Introduction To Virtual Camera
trigger evaluation of Python Script devices during rendering. That feature is always enabled and it helps to trigger Embedded Python Scripts while running an offline rendering.