Disabling Post Effects on Unreal Engine

Introduction

This guide explains how to remove or turn off post effects in games made with Unreal Engine 4 and 5. Doing this can make your games run better and look cleaner.

Unreal Engine 4

You can turn off these post effects in Unreal Engine 4 games:

  • Motion Blur

  • Depth of Field

  • Chromatic Aberration

Phase 1: Editing the Engine.ini File

To turn off these effects, follow these steps:

  1. Locate the Engine.ini File: Go to %APPDATA% or %LOCALAPPDATA% and find your game’s configuration folder:

    • Steam: "GAME"/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor

    • Windows Game Store: "GAME"/Saved/Config/WinGDK

  2. Edit the Engine.ini File: Open the Engine.ini file and add these lines at the very end:

    [SystemSettings]
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.MotionBlur.Max=0
r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.DefaultFeature.MotionBlur=0
r.SceneColorFringe.Max=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0

  3. Save and Set to Read-Only: Save the file, then set it to Read Only so it can’t be changed by accident.

Notes

  • Remember that changing settings in-game might need a restart to apply the changes you made to the Engine.ini file.

  • This method might not always work, and results can be different.

  • For more details on changing the Engine.ini file, visit the PC Gaming Wiki.

Unreal Engine 5

Unreal Engine 5 games need different settings to turn off post effects. Here’s an example for HellBlade 2:

[SystemSettings]
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.Tonemapper.GrainQuantization=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=0
r.NT.Lens.Distortion.Intensity=0
r.NT.Lens.Distortion.Stretch=0
r.NT.Lens.ChromaticAberration.Intensity=0
r.NT.DOF.RotationalBokeh=0
r.NT.DOF.NTBokehTransform=0
r.FilmGrain=0

To get rid of letterboxing, add these lines:

r.NT.AllowAspectRatioHorizontalExtension=0
r.NT.EnableConstrainAspectRatio=0

Note

For Unreal 5 games, you’ll need to figure out the settings case-by-case until we release an add-on to turn off specific effects.

Shader Toggler

The Shader Toggler is a free ReShade add-on that can turn off certain effects that might cause problems with Depth3D. You can find out more about it in our ReShade guide.

Upcoming Content

A video guide on how to remove post effects in Unreal Engine is coming soon. Keep an eye out for more updates and tutorials! 📹