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The Post-processing page
By Ryleigh Newman · Published
The Post-processing page in Rockstar Shaders has four settings: Depth of field, DoF taps, Exposure key and Film grain. They are the adjustable part of a longer chain that runs after the world is drawn: temporal anti-aliasing, auto-exposure, bloom, depth of field, grain, the walking bob, AgX filmic grading and a color grade, then the composite with vanilla's own frame.
I made Rockstar Shaders, a shader mod for Minecraft Java 26.3 on Apple Silicon Macs, and these help pages exist so every setting has a plain explanation beside it. This page is written from the code as it stands in 1.0.
Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.
What runs after the world is drawn
The pack draws terrain into a G-buffer and shades it in a deferred lighting pass. This page is about everything that happens to that finished image before it reaches the window. The pieces, as the code names them: temporal anti-aliasing; auto-exposure, which meters every other frame; bloom; depth of field; optional film grain; a bob warp that applies the walking bob to the whole frame; AgX filmic grading; and a display-referred color grade with sky, water and shadow-lift terms.
Then comes the hybrid pass, which composites vanilla's own frame, the parts the pack does not draw itself, with the pack's deferred terrain. Vanilla's sky, entities that are not in the G-buffer, particles and the GUI arrive this way. Entities are in the G-buffer by default, under Entities lit by pack on the Performance and Overlays page, so they take the pack's lighting rather than arriving through the composite.
Anti-aliasing
The anti-aliasing is temporal: each frame is blended with the history of the frames before it, which is what smooths edges without drawing more pixels. It has no setting on this page. The far terrain of the extended horizon goes through it as geometry, the same as vanilla's chunks. The cloud march uses reprojection in a related way, drawing one pixel in four per frame over 8-pixel tiles and reprojecting the rest.
Rendering below the window's resolution is a separate matter: Render scale draws the world at a fraction of the window, 75% by default, and upscales it while the menus stay sharp. It is on the Performance and Overlays page with Target FPS, which lowers the scale on its own when frames miss a rate.
Depth of field and DoF taps
Depth of field blurs the far field when you look at something close. It is on by default. Look at the ground at your feet or a block within reach and the distance softens; look far and the blur goes. Off keeps everything sharp at every distance.
DoF taps is the number of samples in the blur kernel. The default is 12; the slider runs from 4 to 16 in steps of 2. More taps make a smoother blur and cost more; fewer make it cheaper and coarser. It only matters while Depth of field is on.
Exposure key
The pack's exposure is automatic: it meters the scene every other frame and adjusts so the image sits at a chosen brightness, the way a camera's auto-exposure does. Exposure key is the mid-gray that auto-exposure aims for. The default is 0.14; the slider runs from 0.05 to 0.30 in steps of 0.01, and higher is brighter.
This is the setting for a picture that is generally too dark or too bright across the day. It is not a brightness slider in the vanilla sense: it moves the target the metering chases, so every scene, noon or cave, is exposed toward the new target rather than lifted by a fixed amount. If only one kind of scene looks wrong, a cave lit by torches for instance, the cause is more likely on Lighting and Shadows, where the colored block light and the dynamic lights live.
Bloom and Film grain
Bloom has no setting on this page. The chain takes the bright parts of the frame down through a set of smaller copies and back up, so bright things bleed a little light into their surroundings. Emissive blocks and emissive entities, including the ones a resource pack in the OptiFine format marks with the _e suffix, bloom through the same emission channel as everything else that emits.
Film grain lays a fine grain over the final image. It is off by default. On, a slight texture sits over everything; off, the image is clean. It is a matter of taste rather than a fix for anything.
Color: AgX and the grade
The final look comes from two steps with no slider on this page. AgX is a filmic tone curve: it maps the scene's light, which has no upper limit, onto the range a display can show. After it comes a display-referred color grade with sky, water and shadow-lift terms. The grade is where the sky's blueness is lifted, so a gray noon sky reads as azure, and where the water's color and the lift in the shadows are set.
The sky's own color, the sunset band, the stars and the moon glow are on Sky and Clouds. For anything the curated pages do not expose, the Advanced page lists every tune key the pipeline builders read, about 600 of them.
How a change applies, and what to look at next
All four settings are tune settings. A change applies when the page closes with Done, which rebuilds the shader pipelines in about a second and restarts the water's ripple field from flat. A value set back to the shader default is stored as no override, and Reset to defaults on the front page forgets every override. See-through on the front page fades the menu so the world shows through, and holding F1 on any Rockstar Shaders page hides it completely; both are easier than closing and reopening to judge a change.
A picture that looks like vanilla, with none of this chain applied, is not a post-processing question. The settings header says whether the pack is rendering, Show FPS prints "vanilla" in amber when it is not, and the Troubleshooting page starts from there.
Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.
Related
Questions
Can I turn off anti-aliasing in Rockstar Shaders?
Not from this page. The four settings here are Depth of field, DoF taps, Exposure key and Film grain. The temporal anti-aliasing is part of the pack's chain and has no switch among the 82 curated settings.
Why does the distance go blurry when I look at something close?
Depth of field, on by default, blurs the far field when you look close. Turn it off for a sharp picture at every distance, or lower DoF taps, 12 by default, to make the blur cheaper.
The picture is too dark. What do I change?
Exposure key. It is the mid-gray the auto-exposure aims for, 0.14 by default, from 0.05 to 0.30, and higher is brighter. If only lit caves look wrong, the block light and dynamic lights on Lighting and Shadows are the more likely cause.
Is bloom adjustable?
Not on this page. Bloom has no curated setting; emissive blocks and entities bloom through the same emission channel as the pack's own light. The Advanced page lists every tune key the pipeline builders read.
Does Render scale make the menus blurry?
No. Render scale draws the world at a fraction of the window's resolution and upscales it; the menus stay sharp. It is on the Performance and Overlays page, 75% by default.
What is the walking bob doing in a post-processing list?
The pack applies the walking bob as a warp on the finished frame, so the world is drawn steady and the bob is put back at the end of the chain. There is no setting for it.