UIEffect
UIEffect is an open-source package that allows you to intuitively apply rich UI effects directly from the Inspector or via code. Combine various filters, such as grayscale, blur, and dissolve, to decorate your UI with a unique visual style!
A Unity package that adds visual effects, blur, grayscale, dissolve, and glowing outlines, to any UI element in a game without writing code, by attaching a component in the Unity Inspector.
UIEffect is a Unity package for adding visual effects to UI elements in games. Unity is a popular tool for building games and interactive apps, and its built-in UI system lets developers place buttons, images, and text on screen. UIEffect extends that system by letting you apply filters like grayscale (turning colored images gray), blur (making things look out-of-focus), and dissolve (a fading-away animation) to any UI element.
You add effects by attaching a component to a UI object in the Unity Inspector, which is the panel where you adjust properties visually, and tuning the settings there. No code is required for basic use. Multiple filters can be layered together, so you can combine blur with a color shift or add a glowing edge outline to a button.
Beyond individual effects, the package includes two companion components: UIEffectTweener, which animates effects over time (so you could fade a grayscale filter in when a button gets disabled), and UIEffectReplica, which copies one element's effects onto several others so you do not have to configure each separately.
The package works with Unity 2020.3 and later, including both the Universal Render Pipeline and the High Definition Render Pipeline for modern visual styles, and it also supports VR projects. It integrates with TextMeshPro for styled text, ShaderGraph for custom shader setups, and Unity Timeline for scripted animation sequences. Only the shader code needed for your specific chosen effects is compiled, which keeps build times shorter than compiling every possible variant.
The full README is longer than what was shown.
Where it fits
- Apply a grayscale filter to buttons or icons when they are disabled, to give a clear visual cue to players.
- Add a dissolve animation to a UI panel so it fades out in a stylized way instead of disappearing instantly.
- Layer blur and color-shift effects on a pause-menu overlay to make the background game screen look out-of-focus.