Make Visual Novels Romance Shader Pack for Ren’Py

A message from Stella, that person behind this pack:

“Make Visual Novels exists to help devs make cooler, weirder, awesomer visual novels. We do that by running events, making packs, and managing stuff like the VNDev.Wiki! But running events, competitions, and resources costs money.  Buying this pack helps me fund new shader packs, DevTalks, and keep our community thriving.”

What is this?

This is a lovely pack of effects for Ren’Py that make your romantic scenes pop with just the right amount of sparkle, glow, and flair.

This pack has 5 types of animated, customizable effects designed to be layered with your scene to match your characters' vibes and moments of emotional impact.

• Bloom gives everything a gentle, glowy haze. Great for adding detail to lighting in a scene and enhance visuals.
• Bokeh adds the classic floating lights to your scene. 
• Glints/Sparkles adds sparkles or stars to the scene. 
• Vignette creates a soft pink-tinted edge fade, perfect for quiet gazes and slow-burn moments.
• God Rays answer your prayers of true love, or at least dramatic lighting.

What’s it for?

Blushing declarations? Dramatic tension? Bittersweet goodbye? Apply one shader. Or three. Layer effects to taste.

Works great for:

• Romance routes
• Soft flashbacks
• Love triangle stare-offs
• That one time your MC literally sparkled from secondhand embarrassment

Included Transforms:

• AddBokeh – Gentle additive pink bokeh for soft love scenes and aesthetic sparkle overlays.
• BlissEffect – A timed dreamy fade-to-white effect. Perfect for swoons, kisses, or vision loss due to love.
• Bokeh – Default bokeh shader with soft yellow and pink tones. Good all-around mood enhancer.
• Bloom – Balanced bloom effect for everyday glow-ups and soft glam looks.
• ColorBokeh(amount, density, mode, speed, color1, color2) – A customizable bokeh shader. Choose your density, color, speed, and colors.   Be careful about setting amount and density too high, as it could have significant performance impact on lower end machines.
• CreateBokeh(amount, density, mode, speed) – Another customizable bokeh effect, but without the color portions.    Be careful about setting amount and density too high, as it could have significant performance impact on lower end machines.
• FuzzyBloom – More intense bloom, fuzzier edges. Great for daydreams, kisses, and blush attacks.
• Glint – Classic animated sparkle generation.
• Godrays – Basic Godray template, copy and customize to tailor it for your scenes..
• MaskedRays(mask, child) – Godrays masked to specific shapes. Great for dramatic lighting through windows.
• MoonBloom – Very soft, low-intensity bloom. 
• MoonMotes – Calm, slow-floating blue motes.
• Moonrays – Cool-toned godrays that drift slowly. Ideal for moonlit drama and divine sparkle entrances.
• MVNBubbleBlast – A burst of upward-moving bokeh. Confessions, spells, or emotional explosions.
• MVNBubbles – Soft, floaty bokeh bubbles. Think magical transformations or underwater cuddles.
• MVNVignette – Black soft-edge vignette for drama, dread, or just classy visual framing.
• NegaGlint – Tiny negative-space sparkles for an edgy shimmer. Good for cursed jewelry or darkly dazzling vibes.
• NyoomMotes – Fast-moving blue motes that zip across the screen. Hyperactive fairy dust energy.  Mostly for memes.
• OtomeBrains – A soft pink vignette. 

Bonus Preset for the SimulatedLighting Shader (Requires the Make Visual Novels! Shader Pack):

• NightLighting – Stylized tri-light pass with rim and fill lighting. Make nighttime scenes feel lit and cinematic.   Uncomment it in MVNRomFXTemplates.rpy to use it!
  

What are these files?

• MVNRomFX.rpy, which contains the code for all included effects.
• MVNRomFXTemplates.rpy  is where you'll mostly want to be. Use the prebuilt transforms like any other, and copy/paste them in your own RPY file to customize them more.

Install Instructions:

Unzip the files into your Ren’Py project’s /game/ folder.

How to Use These Effects

• Bloom and Bliss are best when applied to all objects of the scene.  Using camera transforms can make it easy for simple scenes. Eg:

camera at Bloom

• Bokeh, God Rays, Glints and Sparkles and Vingette all work best when applied to full screen or on objects that span the entire screen, ideally as named instances of objects.   Duplicating your background image as an named instance is perfect for full screen effects:

show (Background Image) at MoonMotes as (Name Of This Instance)

And using the behind keyword can help you layer it properly amongst your other effects, characters and elements.

show (Background Image) at MoonMotes as (Name Of This Instance) behind (NameOfCharacter/Element in the Scene)

The parameterized Bokeh effects (CreateBokeh and ColorBokeh) have specific requirements for their parameters.  

• Amount, density, and speed need to be floats(numbers with decimals, eg. 1.0, 10.0, 100.0)
• The "Mode" refers to the blending mode.  See this bit in the documentation on available blending modes.
• The colors in ColorBokeh need to be expressed as a collection of 4 floats:, eg: (0.3,0.6,2.0,0.5).  This represents the RGBA value it will blend between.

I also recommend also grabbing my original Make Visual Novels! Shader Pack, as it includes many lighting and shading effects that combine very well with these effects, especially the SimulatedLighting shader.

A message from Stella, again:

“Make Visual Novels exists to help devs make cooler, weirder, awesomer visual novels. We do that by running events, making packs, and managing stuff like the VNDev.Wiki! But running events, competitions, and resources costs money.  Buying this pack helps me fund new shader packs, DevTalks, and keep our community thriving.”

transform MVNVignettePink:
    mesh True
    shader "MakeVisualNovels.LPVingette"
    u_vin_radius (0.5)
    u_vin_softness (0.3)
    u_vin_strength (0.5)
    u_vin_center (0.5, 0.5)
    u_vin_tint (1.0, 0.4, 0.6)

transform MVNVignetteWarm:
    mesh True
    shader "MakeVisualNovels.LPVingette"
    u_vin_radius (0.5)
    u_vin_softness (0.3)
    u_vin_strength (0.5)
    u_vin_center (0.5, 0.5)
    u_vin_tint (1.0, 0.3, 0.0)
transform MVNVignetteCool:
    mesh True
    shader "MakeVisualNovels.LPVingette"
    u_vin_radius (0.5)
    u_vin_softness (0.3)
    u_vin_strength (0.5)
    u_vin_center (0.5, 0.5)
    u_vin_tint (0.2, 0.4, 1.0)
transform MVNVignetteDream:
    mesh True
    shader "MakeVisualNovels.LPVingette"
    u_vin_radius (0.5)
    u_vin_softness (0.3)
    u_vin_strength (0.5)
    u_vin_center (0.5, 0.5)
    u_vin_tint (0.2, 0.9, 0.4)