Cinematic Image Effects (pre-release)

by Tim Cooper, 

Hi! At Unity we are currently developing a number of new Image Effects. The idea behind these effects is that they should look amazing and scale to different hardware levels (where possible).

The effects currently in development are:

• Screen Space Reflections
• Tonemapping & Color Grading
• New Antialiasing (SMAA)
• Depth of Field

We will be adding more as we start to finish these current effects up.

Open Source development

Each of the listed effects are at a different phase of
development, but we don’t feel that this should stop you from getting your hands on them now. For these new image effects we will be developing them, and shipping them, on a public bitbucket account, as well as periodically on the asset store. This means that the unity developers that modify these effects, as well as you (?) will be developing in the public space. We will be actively taking pull requests and engaging in discussion about issues and fixes. We would love to hear your feedback and see some pull requests from you.

Where to Download

You will be able to get the project either from BitBucket or the Asset Store. The version on the Asset Store will be periodically updated, and that version tagged in the main Effect repository.

Asset Store

http://u3d.as/mHd

Open Source

https://bitbucket.org/Unity-Technologies/cinematic-image-effects

Two variations using the Tone Mapping and Color Grading tools in our Unity labs scene

Current Status

Screen Space Reflections – We just missed the cutoff for 5.3 due to one or two outstanding issues. These have since been fixed. You should be able to use this effect now in your project and achieve desirable results. Note: This effect requires Deferred Rendering. Not designed for or tested on mobile.

• Tonemapping & Colour Grading – Still in development, but in a decent beta state. Supports texture LUT and other custom grading settings.
• Depth of Field – Still in development, but in a decent beta state.
• SMAA – Still in development and buggy. We have had success in some scenes, but not in others. It might work well for your project but we are actively working on improving it.

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on these effects and building shiny things with you!
-Tim C


Depth of Field used in our Shader Calibration scene