URP Post Processing

This article will be kind of like all all-encompassing study of post processing in URP. It might be a little lengthy, but lots of info!

So how do you setup post processing in URP?

In the package manager, you’ll need to install it into your project.

After that installs, all you need to do is right click in your hierachy and select “volume”. There will be a few options to chose from. For now I’ll select “global volume”. The global volume will effect your entire scene. I’ll get into the others in a bit.

Then select “new” in the profile field. his creates a new volume stack. It can be found in the project view if you click on it just to see where it was saved.

Now in the window tab, navigate to rendering and select the render pipeine converter. I just check all the boxes, initializer converters, and then click convert. Make sure you select “built in to URP”.

Now on the main camaera, select “post processing”. THis will enable the post processing for the camera to render. I always make sure the anti aliasing is set to FXAA. Doing this may make your scene look a little darker. This is just because Anti Aliasing is basically like blending pixels so that there arent any super sharp edges on things that should be simply straight lines.

Now all that is left to do is add some overrides to your global volume and watch the effects take place!

I really enjoy using the Lift, Gamma, Gain, override. It really exaggerates the colors and makes the scene look interesting. Bloom is really cool too and will probably give you the most dramatic effect. Obviously I’m no lighting/post processing. These settings can all be kinda left up to interpretation for the developer using it.

Now that the basics are covered, I want to cover some of the other volumes and how they can be used to add some really neat effects to your scene.

For this example I’ll basically be cutting this room in half. 1 side will be sort of a cool tone and the other side will be warm. This can be accomplished using the box volume.

For this demonstration I’ll deactivate the global volume for now. Then create 2 new Volumes. Both box volumes. Then select new in the profile field. This cretes 2 new post processing stacks. Then I’ll just add a color adjustment override to each one. I’ll set the left side to a cool blueish color and the right side to a warm orangish color.

The two box volumes will need to be sized accordingly in the scene view. The green colliders in this photo show the size of each volume.

Now in the scene view if I fly my camera into the left and right volume areas, the color of the overall scene should change. This is something really cool you can do to “set the mood” in different levels or rooms in your game.

The sphere volume can be used in much the same way.

I hope this helps with understanding post processing in URP. It works similarly to SRP, but you dont have to create a post processing layer and do all the stuff i covered in the 2D space shooter course. The workflow is a little more streamlined.