DreamyLab30/Filmimic

Filmimic is a source-distributed Unreal Engine plugin for real-time film emulation. It targets Unreal artists who want film color, animated grain, halation, bloom, lens artifacts and framing in a single post-process workflow, rather than stacking separate grading and effect tools. It ships 21 bundled looks (preset names denote artistic styles, not measured film-stock responses), reusable preset assets and Blueprint control.

What it changes in a workflow

The plugin adds a FilmimicActor to a level; selecting a preset applies a look across the scene, and an Asset can be edited per Actor, saved as a new preset under /Game/FilmimicPresets, or shared so later edits propagate. The three controls to understand first are Enabled (off restores the native Unreal path), Weight (0 to 1 blends native output against Filmimic) and Intensity (strength inside the Filmimic chain). Leaving Weight at 1 replaces the tonemapper, so native UE color grading and LUTs no longer stack as ordinary additional grading.

Presets, regions and automation

A world-wide look is the default (Unbound); turning that off uses Radius and Blend Distance around the Actor, with the highest-priority candidate owning the view and fading toward native output. Overlapping actors do not perform arbitrary multi-look blending. For animation, the Filmimic component exposes named-parameter Blueprint calls, fade and preset-blend transitions, four "Animated Controls" slots for Sequencer, and keyframes on Weight, Intensity and Exposure EV. Presets store effect settings and resource bindings, not Actor position, area radius or Weight, and switching presets in local mode replaces the local values.

Requirements and support boundaries

The tested baseline is Unreal Engine 5.8.3 / Windows / DX12 / SM6 with the matching C++ toolchain; the repository contains plugin sources and assets, not the engine, compiled binaries or the sample ArchVis map used for the showcase renders. Installation is by cloning into the project's plugin folder and building the Editor target; Blueprint-only projects may need a C++ module or a locally built plugin package first. The build wrapper can produce a distributable plugin, but a successful BuildPlugin does not verify a cooked game.

The README is explicit that cooked-game execution, other engine versions and platforms, and Movie Render Queue are unverified; HDR has numerical checks but no physical-display validation; VR is experimental and off by default. SceneCapture participation is opt-in and reflection captures are excluded. The Stylized 2D Blur is a whole-image effect, not motion blur.

Reported development timings (RTX 4090, Default preset, isolated SceneCapture, Insights GPU timing) range from 1.65 to 1.98 ms at 1920×1080 for the quicker tiers up to 28.7 ms for Reference, and 3.5 to 9.8 ms at 3840×2160; these are plugin GPU timings, not full frame times or a cross-hardware benchmark. Profile your own scene.

The project is GPL-2.0-or-later with separate third-party terms, and Unreal Engine is licensed separately with no exception granted to Epic's terms; downstream distribution must respect the applicable licenses. See the source repository, user guide, validation notes and license scope.