Blur effect for a pause menu

I'd also like to know this.

I've tried applying shaders to a 1920x1080 object, but after trying all the blur shaders I have installed, I haven't found any suitable. Most (eg. Flavien Clermont's) only blur the active object, rather than the background.

The closest I found were a couple by Looki that affect the background (BackgroundBlur & SelBgBlur). But they don't really blur the screen - but more of a double-vision effect (no matter the Coeff setting, you can still see things pretty clearly, and even read most text, it just feels like you're drunk. )

I just use a Black Active object wit 125 coefficient to reappear during pause.
I use layers, so I put this object in the one before last last layer, when it appears it shades all layers behind it. The pause menu is nice and bright and everything else is darkened.

I do that too, at the moment. Though a nice soft blur would look really great. Also, in some cases it might be beneficial to obscure what's on the screen, rather than just dimming it.

I use background blur shader and it works like a charm. Not sure how Volnaiskra is using it.

I use a 16x16 or less active in the color I want and place it in the upper left corner of the frame. Then use X and Y scale with semi-transparency. Works like a charm. You could also set all your actives when the filter is up to semi-transparency. Good effect. I use the 16x16 active filter sometimes as a flash the screen type effect for explosions too.

Quote from J3sseM

I use background blur shader and it works like a charm. Not sure how Volnaiskra is using it.

Well, it sorta works, but I guess it depends on what you want from the blur. If you want things to be totally obscured, or really nice and super soft, then it isn't as effective as it could be. It's an aesthetic preference mainly, I guess.

see this screenshot: (Please login to see this link.)

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-The "photoshop blur" shows the sort of blur I'd like to see - really soft and pretty, totally obscures all detail, and gives the eye absolutely nothing to focus on (ie. perfect for popup menus). I think in this case it's a Photoshop "Lens Blur", but a regular "Gaussian Blur" would achieve much the same effect. This style of blur seems fairly standard in games

-Looki's "background blur" shader at 5.0 blurs things to some extent, but sharp lines are still present (albeit doubled a la drunk vision), detail can still be seen, and the eye is still drawn to particular sharp elements. It's almost like it duplicates the pixels rather than bleeding them together.

-"Background Blur" continues to blur more as you increase the setting, but much higher than 5.0, and the distracting 'drunk vision' effect starts getting excessive (as can be seen in the 20.0 shot)

Ah I see what you mean, I've personally only used it to have a small blur effect.

Hey, how i can download BackgroundBlur?

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(it's in the folder called "Other")

Thx, man!

I realize this is an old thread, but just in case it helps, the best solution would be to overlay multiple objects, each with a relatively mild background blur effect applied.

Quote from MuddyMole

I realize this is an old thread, but just in case it helps, the best solution would be to overlay multiple objects, each with a relatively mild background blur effect applied.

I think I missed this post back in June. I just saw it yesterday and tried the advice. Works a treat!! I used 3 objects with fX & fY values of 0.3, 0.5, and 0.7, respectively. With this combination, I achieved basically exactly the sort of super soft blur I was after. Having 3 fullscreen shaders active takes a toll on performance, but for a pause screen that's not an issue. I'm really happy about this - thanks MuddyMole!