VHS effect breakdown in less than a minute

Following the post about sharing my progress here. While working on my prototype, I wanted to add a VHS-style post-processing effect for a retro, analog vibe.

I explored the asset store and found a good one, but at a pretty high price point, it felt too much for this stage of development.

I also checked several free and open-source implementations on GitHub, but many lacked documentation or even basic instructions on how to integrate them.

And since I prioritize development speed, it turned out building my own was faster than reverse-engineering someone else's code, especially with the help of AI to speed up shader prototyping and testing.

So, I created a custom VHS effect from scratch.

I broke the look down into key components:
🔹 Scanlines – flickering lines to mimic CRT displays
🔹 Color grading – slight desaturation with a soft blue tint
🔹 Color bleed – RGB channel separation (chromatic aberration)
🔹 Noise/static – analog-style grain
🔹 Wobble/distortion – horizontal offset to simulate tape playback

Each of these can be toggled on/off and fine-tuned in real time, and when combined, they recreate the familiar imperfections of VHS playback.

Have you seen any open source VHS effect that you can recommend? Or do you have any suggestions to improve my version?

#postprocess #shader #builtin #vhs