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Post Process Volume

APostProcessVolume — applies a post process chain to anything inside its bounds, blending with the global default and other volumes by priority + blend weight.

Key properties

Property Effect
Unbound Affect the whole world regardless of bounds
Priority Higher priority wins where volumes overlap
Blend Weight 0–1 — partial application
Blend Radius Soft falloff at the boundary (cm)
Settings → ... Hundreds of per-effect properties

Setting categories

Category Notable settings
Lens / Camera Aperture, ISO, Shutter Speed, FocalDistance
Color Grading Saturation, Contrast, Gain, Offset, Slope (ASC CDL)
Bloom Intensity, Threshold, ConvolutionKernel
Auto Exposure MinBrightness, MaxBrightness, SpeedUp/Down
Lumen LumenSceneLightingQuality, LumenReflectionQuality
Path Tracing MaxBounces, SamplesPerPixel
Anti-Aliasing TSR / DLSS / FSR settings
Local Exposure HighlightContrastScale, ShadowContrastScale
Film Grain Intensity, Response, Texel Size

Layering

Use multiple volumes for "zones" — e.g.

  • Global default volume (Unbound, Priority 0) — base look
  • Cave volume (Priority 10, BlendRadius 200) — darker, warmer
  • Boss arena volume (Priority 20) — red color grading, motion blur

Blendable materials

The Blendables array accepts:

  • Post Process Materials (Material Domain = Post Process)
  • LUT textures
  • Asset User Data subclasses for custom blends

Stack many small effects — each material runs as one full-screen pass; profile under ProfileGPU → PostProcessing.

Per-camera override

Camera Components have PostProcessBlendWeight and full PostProcessSettings of their own — used for player cameras, ironsights, photo mode.

Console parity

r.* CVars can override volume settings entirely. Useful in shipping for adjusting quality per-platform:

r.MotionBlurQuality 0
r.BloomQuality 3
r.Tonemapper.Quality 5

Gotchas

  • Auto Exposure is per-camera + per-volume — they multiply. Set Min=Max to force a fixed exposure.
  • Lumen settings only apply if Lumen is enabled project-wide.
  • A Blend Radius = 0 causes a hard cut, which is sometimes desirable (e.g. portal effect).
  • The Color Grading > Misc section has a Scene Color Tint that affects everything — easy to forget.

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