- NEWS
- We will be giving a presentation at CEDEC 2025 titled “YEBIS 4 Is Here! Evolution of Optical Effects and Powerful New Features.”
What is YEBIS 4?
YEBIS 4 is a post-processing middleware that enhances real-time visuals, whether CG or live action, with a range of optical effects, such as depth of field (DoF), lens flares, and motion blur, as well as other post-processing effects, including ambient occlusion, color grading, anti-aliasing, and more.
With YEBIS 4, developers can dramatically boost both visual fidelity and production efficiency in real-time applications.
Key Features
Bringing Atmosphere to Real-Time Visuals
By applying YEBIS post-effects to CG visuals, you can evoke the sense of humidity, glare, and other environmental impressions through optical effects. This creates a level of realism and immersion comparable to live-action footage.
The latest release, YEBIS 4, greatly enhances the rendering quality of optical effects such as DoF, lens flares, and aberrations.
Pre-Rendered Quality in Real-Time
YEBIS 4 brings the quality of pre-rendered optical effects to real-time rendering. With a wide range of performance and quality settings, you can use high-speed effects during gameplay, then cinematic-grade visuals for cutscenes.
Transforming Pre-Rendered Production
Using YEBIS 4 in pre-rendered pipelines allows for previewing of post-process effects in real time, at quality close to the final result . What once required long rendering times can now be reviewed instantly— dramatically improving production workflows.
Evolved Balance of Quality and Performance
Optimized for modern GPU architectures and enhanced algorithms, YEBIS 4 offers significant improvements in both quality and speed. Now you can achieve higher-quality results without any additional cost or keep the same quality with a much faster processing time.
Improved Usability
YEBIS 4 has been redesigned with usability in mind. It supports features like effect application across multiple viewports with different resolutions, dynamic quality and resolution switching, color scope, internal buffer views, performance graphs, chromatic aberration diagrams, and more, making development and debugging more efficient.
Advanced Optical Simulation
YEBIS 4 can simulate a wide range of optical aberrations, including spherical aberration, field curvature, astigmatism, distortion, axial chromatic aberration, and lateral chromatic aberration.
Rich and Realistic Effect Rendering
Depth of Field (DoF) Evolution
In addition to the bokeh effects based on optical aberration already supported in YEBIS 3,
YEBIS 4 introduces features such as diffraction patterns derived from
wave optics and onion ring bokeh caused by lens shaping.
Depending on the settings, you can render real-time bokeh that closely resembles photographic images.
Actual photo bokeh (enlarged blur area)
Real-time bokeh rendering with YEBIS 4
Artifacts that tend to appear around edges are also reduced, enabling a more natural depth of field and bokeh effect.
Depth of field without artifacts
Bokeh rendering with onion ring pattern using YEBIS 4
Aperture Shape Representation and Customization
YEBIS 4 brings improved rendering and greater flexibility in customizing aperture shapes.
You can adjust parameters such as the number of aperture blades, roundness, blade curvature,
and even subtle seam distortions , allowing for a wide variety of aperture designs.
Examples of bokeh styles and unique aperture shapes (e.g., shuriken bokeh)
Customizing Lens Aberration and Bokeh Style
YEBIS 4 allows real-time simulation and dynamic customization of spherical aberration and axial chromatic aberration.
Mechanism of Spherical Aberration
Example of Spherical Aberration Correction
Mechanism of Axial Chromatic Aberration
Example of Axial Chromatic Aberration Correction
Bokeh image from an uncorrected spherical lens
Bokeh image from an achromatic corrected lens
You can observe in real time how light passing through a lens forms bokeh, then adjust aberration and its correction accordingly.
Soft bokeh caused by under-corrected spherical aberration
Bubble bokeh caused by over-corrected spherical aberration
Detailed Rendering of Diffraction and Onion Ring Bokeh
In addition to the aberration-based bokeh rendering supported in YEBIS 3,
YEBIS 4 adds finer details like diffraction patterns derived from wave optics and onion ring bokeh caused by lens processing.
By adjusting parameters, you can create everything from natural, photo-like bokeh to more stylized, expressive variations.
Diffraction and onion ring patterns change based on screen position, bokeh size,
and whether the focus is in front or behind the subject.
These effects simulate real optical behavior, rather than simply pasting a bokeh texture onto the image,
enabling complex and realistic effects that are difficult to fake.
Vignetting and Lemon-Shaped Bokeh
Vignetting effects caused by lens barrel occlusion have been improved,
allowing for more natural and visually pleasing lemon-shaped bokeh at wide apertures.
Lemon-shaped bokeh at maximum aperture
Slightly stopped down
Stopped down two stops (vignetting eliminated)
Astigmatism and Swirly Bokeh
YEBIS 4 supports field curvature and astigmatism,
enabling subtle bokeh distortion for more natural blur, as well as stylized effects like swirly bokeh.
Exaggerated bokeh distortion from astigmatism
Swirly bokeh effect from astigmatism
Lens Flare
(Glare Effects)
Diverse Visual Effects Using Image-Based and Sprite-Based Approaches
YEBIS supports two types of glare rendering: image-based glare, which is automatically generated from bright pixels in the input image, and high-quality sprite-based lens flares (referred to in YEBIS as "light ghosts"), which are created from user-defined light sources with specified position, size, and intensity.
By combining these methods and customizing various parameters, you can create a wide range of expressive glare effects.
Controlling Optical Influence and Behavior
In YEBIS 4, glare behavior changes automatically based on optical conditions such as aperture and field of view.
Large aperture
Medium aperture
Small aperture
Alternatively, you can adjust how strongly the glare depends on optical parameters or lock the effect to specific lens characteristics.
In games, extreme zooming beyond what real lenses typically support can result
in glare shapes that are not visually appealing when rendered based strictly on optics.
Being able to fix the shape or limit the amount of variation of the effect based on optical parameters provides a simple way to adjust for the desired look.
Ghost Customization
You can customize the color and pattern of lens ghosts.
Ghost colors are determined by the wavelengths reflected by the anti-reflective (AR) coatings on lens surfaces.
By adjusting the overall AR coating distribution, you can easily generate new variations with realistic, coherent ghost colors.
Standard ghost pattern
Green AR coating / small ghost
Blue AR coating / large ghost
6-blade hard aperture / ignoring light source area
Anamorphic Lens Effects
Anamorphic lenses are specialized lenses designed to horizontally compress
and later expand the image for capturing and projecting widescreen footage using standard film.
Although originally developed for widescreen formats,
their unique optical properties also introduce a variety of distinct visual effects.
Visual from a spherical (standard) lens
Visual with characteristics of an anamorphic lens
The Signature and Subtle Characteristics
The most recognized effects are oval-shaped bokeh and horizontal blue lens flares.
These iconic visuals have led to frequent use of anamorphic lenses for stylistic purposes in film.
However, oval bokeh and horizontal flares alone cannot fully capture the distinctive atmosphere created by actual anamorphic lenses.
In reality, these lenses produce many other optical effects that interact in complex ways to create their unique look.
YEBIS supports a wide range of anamorphic lens effects, including some subtle yet important ones which are rarely discussed.
By simulating distinctive features such as astigmatism, distortion, magnification chromatic aberration,
characteristic vignetting, and focus breathing, YEBIS makes it possible to recreate the unique visual signature of anamorphic lenses.
Typical anamorphic effect rendering
Improved rendering including astigmatism, distortion, magnification chromatic aberration, mechanical vignetting, and more
Anamorphic Astigmatism
One unique characteristic is directional astigmatism, where the focal lengths differ vertically and horizontally.
This results in elongated, line-shaped bokeh either vertically or horizontally around the focus plane,
with a distinct switching behavior as focus shifts across the subject.
How Anamorphic Astigmatism Affects Bokeh Shapes Around the Focal Plane
Anamorphic astigmatism (negative direction)
Anamorphic astigmatism (positive direction)
Anamorphic Lens Flare
YEBIS can express complex anamorphic lens flares formed by overlapping ghost and diffraction effects, rather than just simple horizontal streaks.
Combining these with sprite-based flares (YEBIS’s “light ghost” feature) allows for even richer and more distinctive glare expressions.
Image-based anamorphic flare only
Hybrid rendering using sprite-based flare
Flare shapes also vary depending on the squeeze factor of the anamorphic lens .
Squeeze factor 1.33x
Squeeze factor 2.0x
You can also customize the color characteristics that define anamorphic lens flares.
Tone Mapping
YEBIS’s proprietary tone mapping has evolved further, now offering independent control over the toe,
mid-tones, and shoulder regions of the tone curve. You can also adjust hue shifts in saturated highlight areas.
This allows for flexible adjustments while maintaining consistent visuals across both SDR and HDR outputs.
Tone mapping for SDR output
Tone mapping for 1000-nit HDR output
Exposure Fusion
With support for HDR exposure fusion,
YEBIS 4 makes it possible to reproduce visuals that closely match human perception in extremely high-contrast scenes.
Uniform exposure in a high-contrast scene
Result of exposure fusion
Color Grading
In addition to traditional linear matrix transforms and LUTs applied in the output color space,
YEBIS 4 introduces more flexible, per-zone control over shadows, mid-tones, and highlights.
Because grading is applied in scene-linear space,
you can achieve consistent visual results across a variety of output formats, including HDR devices.
Enhanced Usability Features
HDR Display Output
Same as YEBIS 3, YEBIS 4 supports output to HDR displays.
Even when used with displays that have different peak brightness levels,
4 delivers consistent, artifact-free post-processing results.
In most cases, no special color adjustments are required on the application side to support HDR output.
Virtual HDR Output
For today’s exceptionally bright SDR televisions, YEBIS 4 enables pseudo-HDR output by taking advantage of the screen’s luminance.
Simply increasing the maximum brightness setting in YEBIS’s output device configuration allows
for visually consistent pseudo-HDR rendering similar to actual HDR output.
100-nit SDR
Pseudo-HDR for 300-nit SDR TV
Pseudo-HDR for 1000-nit SDR TV
Resolution Scaling and Upsampling
Dynamic Resolution Scaling
YEBIS 4 allows for dynamic resolution changes within the maximum resolution specified at initialization.
Most post-processing effects will automatically scale in performance accordingly.
Users can also manually set the effects’ internal resolution for as needed.
Integration with Upscaling Technologies
YEBIS 4 works seamlessly with hardware-based upscaling techniques like DLSS, allowing post-effects to be applied effectively.
It supports precise control over when upscaling is applied and even mid-pipeline upscaling, enabling fine-tuning of the balance between quality and performance.
Temporal Antialiasing Upscaling (TAAU)
YEBIS 4 features improved temporal antialiasing (TAA) and now supports temporal antialiasing upscaling (TAAU).
Even on platforms that do not support DLSS or other hardware-based upscaling, you can use TAAU to achieve fast, high-quality results.
Debug Information Visualization
YEBIS 4 supports a wide range of debug visualization features useful for development and debugging.
Color Monitor
You can visualize various aspects of the output color using tools such as tone curve graphs,
waveform monitors (including parade display), histograms, chromaticity distribution, vector scopes, and luminance heatmaps.
Color monitor display
Heatmap display (100-nit output)
Heatmap display (4000-nit output)
Pipeline View
This tool visualizes the sequence of post-effects, resolution changes, and their performance.
You can easily grasp the flow of dynamic resolution, upsampling stages, and the GPU load of each process.
Lens Aberration Diagrams
YEBIS 4 also includes real-time diagrams that show the state of optical aberrations affecting bokeh,
such as spherical aberration, axial chromatic aberration, distortion, and magnification chromatic aberration.
These visualizations help with fine-tuning and customization of optical effects.
Diagram of spherical and axial chromatic aberration
Diagram of distortion and magnification chromatic aberration
Other Features
- Motion Blur
- SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion)
- Lens Distortion / Chromatic Aberration / Panini Projection
- Focus Breathing
- Comet Tail (Afterimage Effect)
- Anti-Aliasing (FXAA / SMAA / TAA)
- Image Sensor Noise (Film Grain / Digital Noise)
- Light Shafts
- Input Color Mapping (Luminance Boost / Gamut Expansion, etc.)
- and more.
Supported Platforms
- Nintendo Switch™
- Nintendo Switch™ 2
- PlayStation® 5
- Windows(Direct3D 11、Direct3D 12)
- Xbox Series X|S
FAQ
- What led to the development of YEBIS 4?
- YEBIS 4 was newly designed to address design limitations and maintainability issues found in the previous version, YEBIS 3. While YEBIS 3 has been widely used in numerous projects over the years, its compatibility with older-generation platforms imposed constraints on optimization for modern environments and efficient maintenance. YEBIS 4 adopts a new architecture tailored to today’s development needs, including better optimization for current platforms and a redesigned, more maintainable interface.
- How has YEBIS 4 evolved compared to YEBIS 3?
- YEBIS 4 is a completely redesigned post-processing middleware developed as the successor to YEBIS 3. It incorporates modern technologies and visual effects that didn’t exist at the time of YEBIS 3’s release, delivering faster and higher-quality post effects. In terms of quality, performance, and flexibility, YEBIS 4 significantly surpasses its predecessor.
- Can I use similar effects on both high-end and low-spec environments?
- Yes. One of YEBIS’s strengths is its wide range of configurable quality-performance trade-offs. By adjusting quality settings, it’s possible to apply effects with a similar impression even in lower-performance environments. However, for certain effect types, the difference in visual output may be more noticeable depending on the quality setting, so we recommend testing under your actual target conditions.
- Is YEBIS 4 compatible with Unreal Engine or Unity?
- Currently, YEBIS 4 is offered as an SDK designed for native implementation on each platform. Integration into game engines such as Unreal Engine or Unity must be handled by the customer. That said, we do offer YEBIS Biz, a plugin based on YEBIS 4 tailored for industrial and video production use with Unreal Engine.
- What is the difference between YEBIS 4 and YEBIS Biz?
- YEBIS Biz internally uses the Windows (D3D12) version of the YEBIS 4 SDK and shares many post-processing features with YEBIS 4. However, YEBIS Biz is provided as a plugin specifically designed for Unreal Engine, targeting applications in industrial CG production and simulation. YEBIS 4, on the other hand, is delivered as a C++ library, allowing for more advanced customization and flexible configuration. Please choose the version that best suits your use case and development environment.
- Can I try YEBIS before purchasing?
- Yes, we offer an evaluation version that includes sample applications for each platform, allowing you to preview functionality before implementation.
- How much does YEBIS cost?
- Pricing varies depending on the number of platforms you intend to use and the level of support required. We will propose the most suitable plan based on your needs, so please contact us via the inquiry form for more details.
- Is YEBIS 4 compatible with YEBIS 3?
- While many of the post-processing features are similar, there is no API-level compatibility between YEBIS 3 and YEBIS 4.
- Will YEBIS 3 still be available?
- Yes, YEBIS 3 will continue to be offered. However, since YEBIS 4 offers superior functionality and support, we recommend adopting YEBIS 4 unless there is a specific reason to continue using the previous version.
- Are there any future updates planned?
- Yes, we plan to continue improving existing features while adding new features and visual effects in upcoming updates.
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