Post-processing & tone mapping

Rendering runs through an EffectComposer, so post-processing is a chain of opt-in passes configured under the environment’s postProcessing block (packages/engine/src/asset-formats/render-env.ts). Each effect has an enabled flag plus its own parameters.

A typical post-processing chain.

Tone mapping

Independent of the effects, tone mapping maps HDR color to display range. toneMapping operators: none, linear, reinhard, cineon, aces, agx, with an exposure level. (The renderer defaults to ACES Filmic — see Rendering.)

The effect catalog

All of these are available under postProcessing:

• Glow & vignette — bloom (intensity, luminanceThreshold, luminanceSmoothing), vignette (darkness, offset).
• Color grading — brightnessContrast, hueSaturation, sepia, colorDepth.
• Lens — chromaticAberration, lensDistortion, depthOfField, tiltShift.
• Film / retro — noise, scanline, dotScreen, grid, pixelation, glitch.
• Distortion — shockWave.
• Anti-aliasing — smaa.
• Ambient occlusion — ssao, n8ao.
• Screen-space — ssr (reflections), ssgi (global illumination), motionBlur.
• Entity-referencing — godRays (from a light source), outline (highlight tagged entities).

Prerequisite passes are automatic

Effects like SSAO/SSR need a normal or velocity pass. Those prerequisite passes are computed only when an effect that needs them is enabled, so you don’t pay for them otherwise.

See also

• Rendering — the composer and default tone mapping.
• Environment — skybox/IBL that feeds reflections.