Effect Zone - Post Process Effects with Volume Blending

Community Showcases
1

Current version in Asset Store: 1.0

Existing users please note! There are some upgrade tasks required when upgrading from 0.8. Please refer to the end of this post for more details.

Hi all!

I’ve been working on Effect Zone for a while now, and the first release has been approved for the Asset Store!

Effect Zone is a singular chain of post processing effects which can be configured and controlled by volumes.

The goal of Effect Zone is to be very easy to use and to allow scene/level designers to apply visual styling and effects to suit scenarios or locations.

For example:

  • a graveyard could apply a dark tint and some grime to enhance spookiness
  • a kid’s room inside a house might apply some saturation and contrast to make the colors stand out
  • the cockpit of a spaceship might strengthen bloom and exposure to make those suns really glare in your eyes.

Effect Zone can be used for many things, from subtle touches right through to very obvious effects.

There are screenshots and more details at the end of this post, and as updates are released I’ll edit with more information.

Asset Store - @pocketninja_au - Original WIP Post

Don’t hesitate to get in touch with ideas or feature requests (and issues)!
Dan

Example of a camera entering and exiting a volume:
As the camera enters the volume aberration, vignette, and blur are gradually applied. Volumes are marked in the scene with gizmos, showing their size and blend radius.

Effects currently in Effect Zone:

  • Ambient Occlusion

  • Depth of Field

  • Simple Motion Blur

  • Exposure

  • 2x Bloom filters with dirt mask support

  • Radial Blur

  • Motion Trail

  • Displace & Blur Mask [new]

  • RGB Split [new]

  • LUT [new]

  • 8 Visual Adjustments

  • Simulated Aberration (RGB split)

  • Tint

  • Saturation

  • Contrast

  • Noise

  • Colorable Vignette

  • Pixelation

  • Full Blur

  • 6 Overlays with multiple blending modes

Effect properties are animatable!

Other features

  • API
  • Custom Effects support [new]
  • Temporary Effect Layers [new]
  • Volume events (C# and Inspector) [new]
  • Source code [new]

Easy to get started:

  • Add Effects component to a camera

  • Configure default camera effects easily using categorised toggles and sliders:

  • Add Volumes/Areas to your scene

  • Configure effects for volume/area easily using categorised toggles and sliders

  • Done!

Support for external targets (eg, for 3rd person games or platformers):

1296×377 478 KB

Some example images showcasing many of the current effects (using models/textures from the awesome Greeble Kit, Orbital Reentry Craft, and Zero Gravity Level Kit):

1858×1199 216 KB

1525×1058 88.2 KB

1858×1199 167 KB

The images above are using the following effects from the chain: depth of field, 2 independent bloom filters, contrast, saturation, tinting, procedural noise, and more.

Upgrade notes for existing users:

Due to the shift from DLL to source code Component references need to be updated. This requires a little hands-on work, but the process is straightforward.

These steps are copy-pasted out of the manual (the manual includes images).

Upgrade process:

  • Backup your project!

  • Did you backup your project? Backup your project!

  • Import the Effect Zone 1.0 package
    At this stage you will notice that camera effects are not processed anymore. This is expected! Old components are deprecated and do no processing.

  • Open up a scene where Effect Zone cameras/volumes are used

  • Select a Game Object with an Effect Zone component. You should see a special upgrade inspector for that component.

  • Click Upgrade component, you should see an upgrade window open.
    This window will clarify what the object is, and what component it is upgrading.

  • If there are any animation clips which reference this Effect Zone component, add them to the Animation Clips list

  • Click UPGRADE COMPONENT

  • The window should update to say that the component has been upgraded. Some details will be logged to the Console

  • Repeat Steps A to E for any Game Objects with Effect Zone cameras/volumes in the scene

  • Repeat Step 4 for any other scenes which have Effect Zone used in them

  • Done!

In some cases you may need to reload your scene, or restart Unity3D.

This process has been tested with Unity3D 5.0.0 and 5.2.2 in Windows and OSX.

Always ensure your work is backed up and safe!

2

0.8 has been approved in the Asset Store!

This version brings overlays, advanced properties, some new effects, and more.

3

1.0 is up!

A rough summary of 0.9 and 1.0:

  • Cleaned up shaders

  • “Ignore alpha” option for overlays

  • Inspector improvements

  • New effects/filters:

  • Displace & Blur mask

  • Advanced channel split

  • LUT support

  • Temporary blending layers (good for pickups or impact effects!)

  • Custom effects support

  • Source code

  • Other general improvements

There are some upgrade notes that existing users will need to pay attention to; please refer to the first post in this thread, and/or the documentation provided with Effect Zone.

4

Very nice work

5

I haven’t purchased it yet; however, if I wanted to know if custom effects would allow me to incorporate a VHS image effect to volumes?

6

Yes! Though you would most likely need to write a shader for it yourself. You may be able to adopt other shaders to be used with Effect Zone’s Custom Effects, but that depends very much on how the other shader and effects work in their own right.

I haven’t had a whole lot of time today, but here’s a super rough demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25dqJ8hjP8c

I’ve never written a VHS style shader before so this example is pretty terrible. :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

It’s a start!

1 Like
8

I was keen to give the VHS effect another crack tonight.

Still room for improvement, but it’s much better than that last one. :wink:

I borrowed a couple images for this shader so I won’t attach a .unitypackage, but if you’re interested you can get the shader over at Bitbucket: VHS Shader — Bitbucket

and the settings I used for the Custom Effect are as follows:

319×696 23.8 KB

1 Like
9

Hi, i want to make broken screen effect (like in this picture) in my mobile game. Should the asset help me with it? or better for me is just to use broken glass texture like screen overlay?

1 Like
10

Hi TG Studio,

For a mobile game I would suggest using a broken glass texture as a screen overlay or similar. The screenshot you linked uses Effect Zone’s Overlays combined with the Displace & Blur filter. This sort of thing has potential to be as expensive as Depth of Field/similar style effects due to the number of texture lookups/etc.

Please note that while some of the more simple effects of Effect Zone might work on mobile devices it is intended for desktop class systems right now. Very little testing has been done with mobile devices at this stage.

Hope this helps!

11

Any reason why it should not work on mobile?

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In truth I don’t know much about implementing post processing on mobile devices. When the latest version was released late 2015 some of the effects worked on my Android device, others simply didn’t work or the performance took too much of a hit to be viable.

The package was intended for desktop/console only.

Post FX on mobile devices in a general sense is tricky - they simply don’t have the same power (supply or processing) as a desktop system does.

In any case, with official packages like GitHub - Unity-Technologies/PostProcessing: Post Processing Stack around they’re more likely to be more viable for performance on mobile devices.