PostMagic
Admin Note: This plugin is specifically made for desktop use and as stated in the description only partially works in VR. If you wish to not have this plugin loaded at all you can permanently disable it from within the "Package Manager".


PostMagic adds post-processing effects to VaM desktop, partially also to VR. Some of the effects have issues or are even marked as experimental.

Note that I stopped working on PostMagic long ago, since it will be obsolete with VaM 2.xx. It would not be useful to make a heavy time investment in this. This is using the 'Post Processing Stack' embedded in VaM, originally provided by Unity Technologies. Also includes a number of LUT textures made by Oeshii.

Version 4 only brings a small improvement to the UserLUT module.

_Title.jpg_UI.jpg
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Effects
  • UserLUT: Rather simple, but very powerful effect. It uses a LookUpTexture (LUT) to remap colors however you want. You can take a screenshot of the game and load it up in Photoshop, GIMP or whatever you use and apply any color filters and re-mappings you need to achieve what you like.
  • Depth of Field: A common post-processing effect that simulates the focus properties of a camera lens. Foreground or background objects can be out of focus and appear blurred. I have also implemented an AutoFocus function, to auto-adjust the FocusDistance. For that you need to place an 'Empty' atom into the scene and name it 'AutoFocusPoint', and attach it to a person head, animate it or whatever.
  • Bloom: Another very common effect is Bloom. It makes bright objects "glow".
  • Grain: This effect adds some "film grain" noise to your scene. Maybe you want your scene look like some old analog movie?
  • Anti-Aliasing: FXAA and TAA: Implements Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA) and Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) algorithms. However, TAA is not supported in VR, I made it to automatically switch to FXAA when in VR. Both algorithms have trouble with VaM's hair, using VaM's own MSAA (at 8x) still produces best results. However, if GPU performance is an issue, you can try to combine some lower MSAA setting with FXAA to get similar results than 8x MSAA, but at higher framerates. TAA can not be combined with MSAA.
  • Vignette: Very common effect used by basically any major game. It very slightly darkens (or colors) the corners of the screen, guiding the eyes toward the center. While Vignette technically also works in VR, it doesn't do too well with stereo rendering. In VR you also see this effect a bit in the center of your field of view.
  • Chromatic Aberration: An effect resulting from a camera’s lens failing to converge all colors to the same point. It appears as “fringes” of color along boundaries that separate dark and bright parts of the image. Works both in Desktop as well as VR.
  • (Experimental) Ambient Occlusion: Screenspace Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) darkens creases, holes, intersections and surfaces that are close to each other. Does not work correctly with characters, which makes it useless.
  • (Experimental) MotionBlur: Blurs fast moving objects. Works okay'ish in Desktop mode, but apparently this effect was not implemented to work in VR. Get your barf bag ready.
  • (Experimental) Dithering: This is supposed to intentionally apply noise as to randomize quantization error. The idea is to prevent large-scale patterns such as color banding in images. However, in this implementation I barely see any difference between turning this on or off.

License
This resource is free under CC BY-SA license for the community.​
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Author
MacGruber
Downloads
1,778,465
Views
1,778,465
Favorites
17
Packages
1
Total Size
30.5 MB
Version
4
First release
Last update
Rating
4.93 star(s) 27 ratings

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Latest updates

  1. Version 4

    I don't really maintain this plugin anymore. However, a generous 3-digit Patreon donation by...

Latest reviews

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Thank you so much for this amazing plugin mate !
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Rly cool update<3
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I use it mainly for antialiasing and it works great, though I'd like a bit of adjustment with TAA so ghosting is less noticeable.
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Because you're widely known to be a legend, I've scarcely added my voice to the praise of your work, but I honestly don't even know how I'd use VAM without this, so I just wanted to give you far too late props for this absolutely vital plugin.
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5 stars ! Itsan essential for me
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Thank you for the update!!!
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Thanks MacGruber and sunstroker! I love LUT's and this is an awesome feature.
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I don't really maintain this plugin anymore.

Indeed, the most requested plugin in VAM, at the Timeline level - why even maintain such USELESS thing ...
MacGruber
MacGruber
Yes, I do consider PostMagic indeed useless. The quality is just too bad to be useful, especially DoF, while AO doesn't even work. As I said many many times PostMagic is only a front-end for hidden post-processing functionality in VaM. There isn't really much I can improve. It would require writing new post-effects from scratch, as off-the-shelve effects won't work with the limitations of VaM plugins. And this isn't exactly trivial work either, it may go into the months of fulltime work range, which I'm unable and unwilling to do in my free time. It's just not worth working myself to death for a few likes and pledges on Patreon. Also Meshed could do it in a fraction of the time, because he CAN more or less just plug in off-the-shelve stuff and build a UI for it.
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What a surprise!
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