Post-Effect

The Post-Effect system applies screen-space lighting, color grading, lens effects, and anti-aliasing to the final output image via a compute-shader pipeline after the 3D scene's G-Buffer rendering is complete.

1. Control Interface

View3D provides two manager properties depending on the post-processing purpose, while actual pipeline execution and texture pooling (PostEffectTexturePool) are centrally managed by PostEffectManager.

• view.postEffectManager (PostEffectManager): Manages built-in effects (useSSAO, useSSR) and user effect chains (addEffect, removeEffect), and executes the entire post-processing pipeline.
• view.toneMappingManager (ToneMappingManager): Controls the tone mapping algorithm (mode), contrast, and brightness that map HDR data into the display output range (LDR).

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2. Rendering Pipeline Execution Order

PostEffectManager executes post-processing in the following 3 phases to preserve physical accuracy and image quality:

1. HDR Built-in & Temporal Phase
   • Sequentially composites SkyAtmosphere, SSAO, and SSR using the scene's HDR color and G-Buffer (depth, normal, motion vector).
   • When TAA is enabled, it performs motion-vector-based temporal accumulation in HDR space prior to tone mapping, followed by camera AutoExposure luminance calculation.
2. User Effects & Smart Tone Mapping Transition Phase
   • Iterates through the effect list registered via view.postEffectManager.addEffect().
   • HDR-based effects (isLdr: false, such as OldBloom) run first in HDR space. As soon as the first LDR effect ( isLdr: true) is encountered, ToneMappingManager is executed immediately to transition into LDR color space (if no LDR effects are present, tone mapping runs right after the loop).
3. LDR Finalization Phase
   • Composites the reference grid (view.grid) using the depth buffer when enabled.
   • Completes the final image through FXAA or TAA's Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS Sharpen) pass depending on the anti-aliasing configuration.

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3. Core Components

1. General Effects: Build filter chains such as bloom, depth of field (DoF), blur, fog, and color adjustments via addEffect().
2. Tone Mapping: Map HDR scene colors and exposure into the LDR display range via ToneMappingManager.
3. Built-in Effects: Activate G-Buffer-integrated SSAO and SSR effects.

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Related Examples

• SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion)
• SSR (Screen Space Reflection)
• Depth of Field (DoF)
• Bloom (OldBloom)

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Next Step: Learn General Effects