Shaders & effects
Facet has two separate systems for treating the look of a scene, and they live in different places in the editor:
- Post-processing — cinematic passes applied to the whole frame (bloom, depth of field, grain, ambient occlusion…). Controlled from the post-processing sliders in the editor's effects menu.
- Shaders — stylised, screen-space looks (ASCII, halftone, VHS, refraction…) that can be made interactive with the cursor. Controlled from the floating Shaders panel.
Both apply live over your scene — dial them in and you see the result immediately, with no render step.
Post-processing
Post-processing passes are grouped in the editor's effects menu, each with an on/off toggle and its own sliders:
| Effect | Controls |
|---|---|
| Depth of Field | Focus distance, Aperture, Max blur — camera-style focus that blurs everything outside the focal plane. |
| Bloom | Threshold, Strength, Radius — soft glow around bright and emissive areas. |
| Ambient occlusion | Radius, Bias — contact shadows in crevices and where surfaces meet. |
| Glare | Threshold, Strength — anamorphic streaks from bright points. |
| Flare | Threshold, Strength — lens flare from bright points. |
| Chromatic aberration | Strength — colour fringing toward the frame edges. |
| Grain & vignette | Grain strength, Vignette — film grain plus edge darkening. |
| Contrast / Saturation | Final colour grade over the whole image. |
| VHS | Strength, Scanlines, Noise — analog tape degradation. |
| ASCII | Cell size, Tint — renders the frame as text characters. |
| Pixelate | Size — blocky, low-res mosaic. |
There is also a richer Depth of Field control in the floating effects panel with a Quality setting (Low / Medium / Great), a Macro toggle for extreme tight focus, and a "Focus on object" button that sets the focal distance to whatever you have selected — plus a Radial Blur (spin / zoom) for motion.
Less is more. A touch of bloom plus a little grain reads as "polished"; everything at maximum reads as "overdone." Start with bloom, add depth of field (use Focus on object) to draw the eye, then a little grain to finish. Note that most passes default to 0 strength — they're off until you deliberately dial them up.
Shaders
Shaders are stylised looks applied on top of the scene from the Shaders panel (open it by double-clicking the background). Each shader is a card with an Enable toggle, a set of dials, and one-click presets to get you started. Facet ships a large library:
| Warp | ASCII | Dithering |
| Halftone | Pixelate | VHS |
| Bad TV | Lens Distortion | Colour Edge |
| Hatching | Slice Shift | Pixel Stretch |
| Pattern Refraction | Toon Shading | Fluid |
| Scan | Pattern Grid | FUI / Tracking |
Each ships with named presets — e.g. ASCII has Terminal / Fine / Chunky, Slice Shift has Glitch / Shred, Scan has Red Scan / Cyan Sweep / Wide Pulse. Click a preset, then fine-tune with the dials.
Reactive vs Still
The defining trait of Facet's shaders is that each one has two modes:
- Reactive (mouse) — the shader follows the cursor. Lens distortion warps around the pointer, Slice Shift shears with horizontal mouse movement, Fluid's flow origin tracks the cursor, FUI targeting brackets lock onto where you point.
- Still (freeze) — the shader holds a fixed value you set with the dials, so it stays put for a clean, static composition.
Crucially, Reactive mode carries into shared previews and embeds. A shader wired to the cursor stays live for anyone viewing your published scene — the embed isn't a video, it's the real interactive thing. See Sharing & embeds.
Availability
The full shader and post-processing library is part of the paid plans (Radiance and up). See Plans & pricing for what's included at each tier.