How to do it...

Let's start by opening the scene we've mentioned at the beginning of this recipe, the one called 02_01_PostProcessEffects. You can find by looking into the content browser: Content/UE4ShadersAndEffects/Maps/Chapter02.

If you want to use a custom level that you have created yourself, feel free to go ahead and just use that one instead. We want to have a scene where we have something interesting to look at—after all, we are trying to use post process effects to affect how something already created looks. Once that's done, let's start the recipe by locating the actor we are going to be playing with:

1. Look for the Post Process Volume inside the Modes | Place | Volumes panel:

1. Drag and drop the volume into the level. Place it anywhere you want, but make sure that it is big enough so that it covers all of the visible scene: 

1. With our newly placed post process volume selected and positioned, let's take a look at some of its settings. We want to make sure that we are affecting the whole scene and not just the inside of the volume. Scroll down to the Post Process Volume Settings and check the Infinite Extent (Unbound) setting:

Doing so will make sure that the effect that this volume has is propagated across the entirety of the level.

By now, you will have probably encountered many of the settings that we will be tweaking in the next recipes—possibly when you were looking for the Unbound toggle in the previous step. Even though we will look at most of them in greater detail later on, let's see what the basic categories are:

• The Color Grading section allows us to modify the color and balance of the scene. Operations such as color correction, creating an intentional mood for the level, or affecting the overall contrast of the scene are performed primarily here.
• The Film panel enables the modification of the tonemapper in UE4. The tonemapper in Unreal is there to tell the program how to trick our eyes into seeing a much wider range of color values than our displays can produce. That is the reason it's not meant to be constantly tweaked—it is there to define how that conversion should be happening and not as an artistic resource.

• Mobile Tonemapper is similar to the previous section, but intended for projects that are going to be deployed on mobile hardware.
• The Lens tab controls certain camera effects, such as the exposure, the chromatic aberration, bloom or lens flares.
• Rendering Features is a panel that controls certain effects that apply to the 3D world. Examples of that are the use of post process materials, the ambient occlusion that is happening across the level, or the quality of the screen space reflections.
• Finally, the Post Process Volume Settings section affects how that particular actor behaves in the world. Defining which overlapping volume should be affecting the world when there are multiple ones or the distance in which two different such entities blend are examples of what we have mentioned previously.

As you can see, there are many properties that can be tweaked and adjusted. We will have a look at them in the following recipes, as even though this is just one actor the importance of the different settings is paramount in regard to the final output we are seeing. See you in the next recipe!