Taking Visuals to the Next Level with Post-Processing

Last time, we learned how to set up post-processing in a Unity project. Now it’s time to use it to make this game look pretty! I’m not particularly good at art stuff, so I’m just going to try minimal changes and see where it gets me. Feel free to experiment more than I do.

First we can add some bloom.

This causes the lights in the game to give off a soft glow.

Now to modify the colors in the scene with color grading. We want to use High Definition Range, but this requires to change the color mode.

We can do so in the Player menu (Edit -> Project Settings). Change the color space to Linear.

Now we can adjust the Color Grading settings. The goal here is to highlight the bright parts of the scene and create a sort of neon, arcade effect.

Continuing in that direction, we can add some chromatic aberration. This causes colors near the edge of the screen to become warped and fuzzy, like old CRT monitors used to.

Finally, some lens distortion will give the illusion that we are playing on a curved screen, completing the arcade effect.

Here’s a before-and-after for all the post-processing! Not bad for just playing around with these effects for a little while.

Of course, a real art pro can do so much more with post-processing, but it’s great that Unity makes it easy to tinker around with these effects.