Persona

Effects apply post-processing passes to the final rendered frame. Each effect appears as an entry in the Scene Effects group above the layer list. Add effects from the Inventory's Scene Effects category, toggle them using the eye icon, and select an entry to adjust its parameters below the list. Unadded effects do not appear in the list and do not alter existing scenes.

Global display adjustments that operate on the entire frame rather than a single effect stage (Tone Mapping, Exposure, and LUT) reside in the Look section at the end of the Environment panel in Stage details.

Each effect configuration is bound to the active scene, allowing different scenes to give the same avatar distinct visual styles.

Supported ScenesCopy Anchor Link

The post-processing pipeline operates on the 3D stage. Effects can be added, and the Look controls appear, whenever a scene contains any layer (a Live2D or VRM model, a 3D object, or a 2D image, video, webpage, or text layer) or has an Environment scene model loaded. In scenes containing only 2D objects, the Environment section shows only the Look controls, keeping camera, lighting, and other 3D settings hidden.

The Inventory's Scene Effects category is disabled with an explanatory note only when the scene is completely empty (no layers and no environment scene model).

Effect ChainCopy Anchor Link

StylizeCopy Anchor Link

These effects run within the post-processing chain to stylize the frame, reshaping pixels for dramatic emphasis, transitions, or retro aesthetics:

Scene Effects and Layer EffectsCopy Anchor Link

The effect system operates at two distinct levels: scene effects, detailed on this page, process the composited final stage output as a global chain, while layer effects attach directly to individual models or objects to process them before blending (such as blurring a background independently or color-grading a prop).

Of the 24 available shader effects, 13 can be applied at the layer level. For the compatibility breakdown, configuration details, and supported object types, see Layer Effects.

Global LookCopy Anchor Link

The Look controls at the end of the Environment section manage global display parameters. These options are not added as individual layer entries:

Processing OrderCopy Anchor Link

The effect processing order is fixed in the rendering pipeline and cannot be altered by rearranging list items. When multiple effects are active, each stage processes the output of the preceding stage:

1. Depth of Field: Runs first, as it is the only built-in pass that reads the scene depth buffer.
2. The Live2D layer (including 2D image and video assets): Rendered after depth of field (flat 2D assets carry no depth data), but ahead of all color operations so that 2D and 3D avatars receive unified color adjustments.
3. Rim Light → Outline → Drop Shadow: Silhouette-based stages. This sequence ensures rim lighting stays within the outline border, and drop shadows project the combined silhouette of both effects.
4. Fisheye → Chromatic Aberration: Fisheye bends everything rendered before it, while chromatic aberration and later stages stay square to the screen.
5. Bloom → Diffusion → Sketch
6. Color grading pipeline: LUT → Color Grading → Levels → Color Wheels → Color Shift → Select Colors
7. Gradient: Positioned immediately after color grading to prevent the gradient overlay from being tinted by grade passes.
8. Blur: Positioned after color grading to soften the graded image.
9. Flare: Positioned after blur so that lens flares remain sharp and are not degraded by blur passes.
10. Pixelate and Subspace Glitch™: Stylized pixelation and signal glitch distortion.
11. Droplets: Foreground glass refraction overlay.
12. Film Grain and Vignette: Camera lens surface filters applied over the finished frame.
13. Editor UI chrome (rendered atop all canvas output).

Tone mapping and exposure are not listed as pipeline stages here; they act as the display transform applied to the finished frame during final output.

Rain and Snow are also omitted from this list because they are not post-processing passes; they are real 3D particle geometries in the scene. They are drawn during the initial scene geometry pass before post-processing begins, and are therefore processed by every stage listed above.

Layer effects do not run in this global chain; they are executed during layer pre-composition before the layer joins the main scene.

Performance CostCopy Anchor Link

Each active post-processing effect requires additional GPU processing. Two options in Settings help balance visual fidelity and performance:

• Render Scale: Sets the internal rendering resolution of the 3D stage canvas; lowering this scale proportionally reduces the processing overhead of all full-screen passes.
• Effects Quality: Adjusts the sampling quality and detail for post-processing effects.

When all effects are disabled, Persona bypasses the post-processing pipeline entirely and renders directly to the viewport canvas, incurring zero post-processing overhead.

Plugin APICopy Anchor Link

All effect parameters correspond to fields on the SceneEffects object, modified via scene.patch and monitored through scene.changed. The data schema is intentionally flat (one key per effect without arbitrary nesting), enabling clients to inspect and traverse the registry generically. See the SDK Reference.

Whether an effect is on and whether it has an entry under Scene Effects are tracked separately:

• enabled: whether the effect is currently active.
• environment.effectLayers: an array of built-in effect keys that decides which effects have an entry in the list.

Enabling an effect through a patch adds its key to effectLayers automatically, so plugins don't need to write to both.

Turning an effect on or off fades it over 0.4 seconds instead of cutting, whether the toggle comes from the UI, an automation, or an API patch. Number and color changes driven by automations also interpolate over the same 0.4 seconds.

Layer effects utilize the identical data structure directly on the layer object: every model and object maintains its own effects and effectLayers properties, using field names identical to the scene-level definitions.