#Visual Polish (Post-Effects)

The final layer that takes your scene from "3D model" to "client-ready render."

Once your scene is built, EVT3D applies a stack of visual effects on top of it — soft contact shadows in the corners, glow on bright sources, reflections on the floor, clean edges, and overall exposure. These are the things that make a render feel like a photograph instead of a model. Almost everything is tunable from one tab, and your settings save with the project.

#What it does

• Bloom. Soft halo around bright lights, LEDs, and reflective highlights — the way a real camera responds to point sources.
• Lens dirt. Optional subtle smearing through highlights, like grime on a real camera lens. Adds cinematic texture to keynote and concert looks.
• Screen-Space Reflections. Surfaces flagged as reflective — polished floors, mirrored stages, glass — pick up reflections of the room around them in real time.
• Contact shadows and corner shading (Render 2.0). Soft shadows where geometry meets — under chairs, in corners, where a riser meets the deck. Contact shadows grounds everything standing on the floor; Corner shading, inside Bounce light (GI), darkens corners, creases, and the floor under furniture while bright surfaces spill light onto their surroundings. Gives the scene depth instead of flat shading.
• Exposure control. One slider for overall image brightness. Useful for matching a gala dim or a daytime trade-show look.
• Antialiasing. Smooths jagged edges on truss, chair backs, and small props. Six modes: Off, MSAA, SMAA, FXAA, MSAA + SMAA, and MSAA + FXAA. The default, MSAA + SMAA, is the best quality and works on most laptops.
• Watermark overlay. An optional repeating "SECURITY WATERMARK" stamp tiled across the 3D view — for client proofs you want signed off as drafts.
• Wireframe view. Strip the materials away and see the geometry as line art. Useful for technical reviews where dimensions matter more than the look.
• Plan 2D view. Switch a camera to a top-down floor-plan view at any time. Bloom and reflections drop out automatically so the plan reads cleanly.

Render 2.0, the default Render pipeline, adds a few more sections to the same tab — Tone curve, Sharpen when still, Bounce light (GI), Contact shadows, Depth haze, and Look grade. Render 1.0 keeps a project's original look and doesn't show them.

#How you use it

1. Open the PostFX tab. It's in Settings, under PostFX (section Post Effects). You'll see collapsible sections for exposure, antialiasing, bloom, reflections, and — on Render 2.0 — the grounding and lighting effects. Each effect has its own on/off switch next to its name.
2. Set your antialiasing. The default mode is the sweet spot — it stacks two different smoothing techniques for the cleanest edges. If you're working on a tablet or older laptop and the scene feels heavy, step down to a cheaper mode for a slightly softer but faster look.
3. Tune bloom. Turn on Bloom and adjust Strength, Threshold (how bright a pixel needs to be to glow), and Softness (on Render 1.0 the third slider is Radius). Under Lens Dirt, click Pick lens dirt texture… and set its Intensity if you want the cinematic grime look.
4. Turn on reflections where they matter. Screen-Space Reflections is opt-in per surface — tick Accept Reflections on the materials that should reflect (gloss floor, mirrored riser front, water feature) and leave matte surfaces alone. This keeps things cheap and avoids reflections smearing where they shouldn't be.
5. Ground the scene (Render 2.0). Turn on Contact shadows for soft shadows where props meet the floor, and set Corner shading inside Bounce light (GI) to taste — higher reads moodier, lower keeps a bright room clean. For a single material, AO Intensity in the material editor sets the strength of its ambient-occlusion map.
6. Set exposure. Push it up for a brightly lit day; pull it down for a warm gala. Affects the whole frame.
7. Add a watermark (optional). In Settings → Branding, turn on Watermark, then set its Mode (In front or Behind booth), Blend, Opacity, Rotation, and Repeat (how many tiles across and down). The watermark is a built-in stamp, not an image you upload; to put your own logo on the view, use Corner Bug in the same tab (Custom image → Pick image…, on paid plans).
8. Flip to wireframe for the technical pass. In edit mode, right-click the View Mode toolbar button and choose View Rendering → Wireframe (or Wireframe Overlay to keep the shading). Line colors live in Settings → General → Wireframe. When the design conversation turns to dimensions and clearances rather than the look, wireframe view strips back the polish.

#Why it matters

The 3D scene is the content; post-effects are the finish. Without them, a render looks like a 3D model — flat, sharp-edged, no atmosphere. With them, it looks like the room you're going to build. EVT3D ships these on by default with sensible settings, so most users never have to touch them — but every knob is there when a client wants the look pushed harder in either direction.