Post-processing effects

… are live! \o/ Huge props to @maxvee and @ConvexRumbler for working on this.

This update introduces 4 new objects: ColorCorrectionEffect, BlurEffect, BloomEffect, SunRaysEffect.

Rendering engine searches for these objects in two places:

  • Children of Lighting (not descendants)
  • Children of Camera (not descendants)

Then picks the ones that are enabled, combines the values in somewhat intuitive ways (e.g. if you have five BlurEffects we’ll use the strongest of them; if you have one ColorCorrection effect that desaturates the image and another one that makes it brighter we’ll apply both) and uses the results for rendering.

All of the effects have a few parameters that you can tweak in Studio or with scripts. It should be pretty straightforward and we’ll have documentation on the wiki in the coming weeks.

Quality

ColorCorrection is enabled regardless of the user’s quality settings. You’re free to use it for gameplay effects - fade out for transitions, desaturate or red tint for death or damage, etc. etc.

Blur and Bloom are enabled on quality levels 6 and up (mobile devices included).

SunRays are enabled on quality levels 8 and up (they do not work on mobile right now).

Studio

Due to quality level restrictions you’d have to change the EditQualityLevel setting or use Play Solo to work with effects. I recommend this plugin: http://devforum.roblox.com/t/simple-slider-for-changing-editqualitylevel/23892 (if somebody can make a version with smaller UI frame that’d be great BTW!)

Anti-aliasing

Anti-aliasing is automatically enabled on quality level 9 and up if your GPU supports it. No need to do anything!

Non-obvious API

BloomEffect.Size controls the halo size of both bloom and neon (since the effects are closely linked - you can think of neon as controllable bloom)

BloomEffect.Threshold has a range of 0…1 but due to a Studio slider issue you can’t set the full range unless you’re using scripts. Animating the threshold from 0 to 0.95 can produce interesting results.

SunRays currently has intensity/spread set up to make for a pretty intense effect; these defaults will change with the next release (which won’t affect objects you already put in your game of course).

Blur vs Neon

Some of you are (ab)using deep stacks of transparent parts with Neon material to simulate blurring. You should try switching to Blur object - it’s much faster for this specific case and gives you control over the blur size (which you can animate when transitioning between menus and the game - hint hint).

Feedback

… is welcome! If something does not work please let us know in this thread.

Also feel free to post beautiful screenshots and videos you have made with these effects here!

84 Likes

Woohoo! This is so exciting and looks great. Big thank you to the team who worked on this!

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The only semi-annoying thing is that some effects don’t work on all render settings.
Blurring could be nice for certain gameplay elements (poison?), but if not everyone sees the blurring…

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Yeah I was really hoping to be able to use a blur debuff. Guess I’ll, uh, stick with crazy brightness/ contrast/ saturation/ tint settings :\

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You can use blur combined with something else?

I don’t think we can run blur on every single PC - there are some PCs that absolutely have to run at quality level 1 to maintain playable framerate, unfortunately.

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I don’t think this is a problem. Even Skyrim has a option to turn blurring off.

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Do you sleep at all? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Sleep?

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You know, I was just thinking of getting up to go to my computer and play with the effects a bit. I’m blaming you. :wink:

Could Roblox ever add blocks that are supposed have a blurry effect? I’ve always wanted to use frosted glass, but I’m not sure what the engine’s limits are (although the usage of Neon to get a partial blur does work).

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will we eventually be able to change the color of sunrays like the gametest version?

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Awesome. I’m probably most hyped for anti-aliasing though :smiley:

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Why didn’t you reply to the thread that you wanted it smaller? I could easily do that.

Also… got to love this idea for an alarm system.

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I was looking forward to using blur for gameplay elements such as effects/transitions/etc, but since not everyone can see it, I don’t think there’s much point at all in using it… It’s not an aesthetic choice either like SunRays because who would want to play with a blurred screen. Is there no way we could force all quality levels to use it? I know some computers would struggle to run it but I’d rather have that than nothing at all. Is there not some way to reduce the quality of the blur to make it easier on low-end PCs/Mobile?

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Dopeness

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Just so everyone knows, my slider is updated to be 50% smaller.

Edit:
Also, Anti-Aliasing support should be pretty cool to have. I may have integrated graphics on a 4th generation Core i5, but it works.


Any particular AA type you guys use?

5 Likes

Sooo many possibilities! Best update since particles :DD

<img src="//devforum-uploads.s3.dualstack.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/original/3X/a/7/a7394289f6919738847350ce4197f264f5f190d2.png" width=“690” height="414

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trying those effects with my WIP Cbr!

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SUNSETS.

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I don’t really understand where this is coming from :frowning: Your transition will not look as good for people who can’t see blur - why is this a problem?

We can double check but blur is very heavily optimized and I’m not sure we can enable it everywhere.

1 Like