Optimizing a Game With Post-Processing

3 min readMay 9, 2021

Post-processing is the process of applying filters and effects to your scenes. It can improve the look significantly, but it is resource-heavy and thus needs to be used with care.

Installing the post-processing package

Setting up post-processing in Unity requires you to install the post-processing package. This can be done via Window ->Package Manager -> Unity Registry -> Post Processing -> Install.

Adding a post-processing profile

We first need a post processing profile. To do so we add an empty game object and rename it Post Process Volume.

We then add a component called Post-process Volume. Setting is Global makes sure the whole game has the same look. We then add a new profile.

The other settings are not relevant at the moment, but let’s see what they do:

The weight is the total weight of the volume. At 0 nothing happens, at 1 it uses the full effect.
The priority is only relevant when we use more than one volume. We can ignore it as well.

In your project folder under “scenes” you will now have a new folder called game_Profiles and a new profile.

Add a post-processing layer

The next step is to add a post-processing layer. We do this on the Post Process Volume object.

On the main camera we add a post processing layer component and select our newly created post processing layer.

Back to our Post Process Volume game object, where we now also set the layer to the post processing layer.

Now we are ready to add some post processing effects.

Adding a Bloom effect

In our post processing volume game object we add the Bloom effect.

There are different properties we can configure:

Intensity: Gives the strength of the Bloom filter
Threshold: Filters out the pixels bellow this level of brightness
Soft Knee: Makes a gradual transition between under and over threshold. 0 is hard. 1 is soft.
Clamp: Clamps the pixels to control the Bloom amount. The value is in the gamma space.
Diffusion: Changes the “veiling” effects.
Anamorphic Ratio: Distorts the Blook.
Color: Allows to change the Bloom color.
Fast Mode: Is a setting recommended for mobile and low-end platforms, where the performance is important. But it can also be used on other platforms to improve performance.
Texture: Applies a texture mask. It’s intensity can also be adjusted.

Have fun and try those effects

There are other effects that you can apply in post processing. Unity offers a great documentation here: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PostProcessingOverview.html

It is fun to test them out and see what effects you are getting.