Hey there! I’m wondering how common it is for games to use bloom (either in a post process effect or some other solution), and whether it should be used for game VFX portfolio pieces or not.
I know very stylized games like League of Legends don’t use it, and instead fake it with 2d glow cards and similar, and that it can get out of control easily. However, it seems like the majority of modern games have some kind of bloom effect, and that it would make sense to put a bloom effect on portfolio pieces, since it (tuned correctly) can make things look nicer, and more accurate to how they might look in a game.
I know there is a performance cost as well, but if the games that someone wants to work on use bloom, it would make sense to include it in their portfolio, right?
Hi! From my standpoint as an indie dev I’d guess that bloom is as common as for example color correction, no matter if the game is stylized or realistic - so I’d say: Sure, use it wherever you like!
It’s good to give it some thought performance-wise, but usually just once per game project and not necessarily per portfolio piece. For example in my last project we switched from Unity’s post processing bloom to a mobile-optimized bloom plugin from the asset store, because the rest of our game ate up lots of performance and this was an easy way to make it run faster - with the drawback, that I had to adjust almost every VFX material in the game, because the bloom plugin needed different emission and color values to look good. So it’s good to settle with an appropriate solution early on.
I’m surprised to hear that LoL doesn’t use bloom, but I would have guessed that’s because of the performance rather than the style.
Thanks for the reply! That makes sense. Yeah, the idea of it as a one-time cost is in line with how I was thinking about it too. Tough situation if you ever have to change if of course, like you said!