Post Processing

A post processing library for three.js.

Demo · Sandbox · Documentation · Wiki

Installation

This library requires the peer dependency three.

npm install three postprocessing

Usage

Post processing introduces the concept of passes and effects to extend the common rendering workflow with fullscreen image manipulation tools. The following WebGL attributes should be used for an optimal post processing workflow:

import { WebGLRenderer } from "three";

const renderer = new WebGLRenderer({
    powerPreference: "high-performance",
    antialias: false,
    stencil: false,
    depth: false
});

The EffectComposer manages and runs passes. It is common practice to use a RenderPass as the first pass to automatically clear the buffers and render a scene for further processing. Fullscreen image effects are rendered via the EffectPass. Please refer to the usage example of three.js for more information on how to setup the renderer, scene and camera.

import { BloomEffect, EffectComposer, EffectPass, RenderPass } from "postprocessing";

const composer = new EffectComposer(renderer);
composer.addPass(new RenderPass(scene, camera));
composer.addPass(new EffectPass(camera, new BloomEffect()));

requestAnimationFrame(function render() {

    requestAnimationFrame(render);
    composer.render();

});

Output Color Space

New applications should follow a linear workflow for color management and postprocessing supports this automatically. Simply set WebGLRenderer.outputColorSpace to SRGBColorSpace and postprocessing will follow suit.

Postprocessing uses UnsignedByteType sRGB frame buffers to store intermediate results. This is a trade-off between hardware support, efficiency and quality since linear results normally require at least 12 bits per color channel to prevent color degradation and banding. With low precision sRGB buffers, colors will be clamped to [0.0, 1.0] and information loss will shift to the darker spectrum which leads to noticable banding in dark scenes. Linear, high precision HalfFloatType buffers don't have these issues and are the preferred option for HDR-like workflows on desktop devices. You can enable high precision frame buffers as follows:

import { HalfFloatType } from "three";

const composer = new EffectComposer(renderer, {
    frameBufferType: HalfFloatType
});

Tone Mapping

Tone mapping is the process of converting HDR colors to LDR output colors. When using postprocessing, the toneMapping setting on the renderer should be set to NoToneMapping (default) and high precision frame buffers should be enabled. Otherwise, colors will be mapped to [0.0, 1.0] at the start of the pipeline. To enable tone mapping, use a ToneMappingEffect at the end of the pipeline.

Note that tone mapping is not applied to the clear color when using only the renderer because clearing doesn't involve shaders. Postprocessing applies to the full input image which means that tone mapping will also be applied uniformly. Consequently, the results of tone mapping a clear color background with and without postprocessing will be different, with the postprocessing approach being correct.

Performance

This library provides an EffectPass which automatically organizes and merges any given combination of effects. This minimizes the amount of render operations and makes it possible to combine many effects without the performance penalties of traditional pass chaining. Additionally, every effect can choose its own blend function.

All fullscreen render operations also use a single triangle that fills the screen. Compared to using a quad, this approach harmonizes with modern GPU rasterization patterns and eliminates unnecessary fragment calculations along the screen diagonal. This is especially beneficial for GPGPU passes and effects that use complex fragment shaders.

Performance Test

Included Effects

The total demo download size is about 60 MB.

• Antialiasing
• Bloom
• Blur
• Color Depth
• Color Grading
• Color Average
• Sepia
• Brightness & Contrast
• Hue & Saturation
• LUT
• Depth of Field
• Vignette
• Glitch
• Chromatic Aberration
• Noise
• God Rays
• Pattern
• Dot-Screen
• Grid
• Scanline
• Pixelation
• Outline
• Shock Wave
• Depth Picking
• SSAO
• Texture
• Tone Mapping

Custom Effects

If you want to learn how to create custom effects or passes, please check the Wiki.

Contributing

Please refer to the contribution guidelines for details.

License

This library is licensed under the Zlib license.

The original code that this library is based on, was written by mrdoob and the three.js contributors and is licensed under the MIT license.