Improved and Real-time Glare Effects for Cycles
For me, adding realistic lens flares and glare into Cycles renders is rarely a practical option. The glare nodes available in Blender's compositor are rather slow and finicky, and a feature such as Eevee's "bloom" effect is not only frequently better looking but also visible in real-time! A feature like this in Cycles would be excellent, along with improved versions of the other glare effects, "Streaks" and "Ghosts."
9 Comments
It's always irked me that that isn't a readily transferable setting between eevee and cycles considering it's a post-processing filter.
* @daviddlfon * Agreed!
I doubt it will be a stand alone feature, as the main point of Cycles is photorealism, therefore making more sense to add it in post-processing.
The compositor needs a lot of work put into it as it hasn't been worked on in awhile, but I remember hearing at some point that compositing could be done in real-time, making something like this possible as a side effect.
* @Zach Hixson * glare is a natural phenomenon of both the retina and camera lenses. It is a vital clue to the brain from overloaded photosensors with intense light. Try peaking at the sun sometime! :-)
* @bukebeyond * True. I wonder what this would look like from a UX perspective though
Bloom is a way of faking volumetric lighting. You'll need to use volumetrics to get a similar effect in Cycles without compositing.
* @Josephbburg * I always thought it was a more practical emulation of camera glare. It certainly looks closer to that in my opinion
* @yarbroughrix * Maybe. Maybe it's not meant to emulate anything in particular, and it just looks pretty. I don't know! I always thought it was a fake volumetric effect.
* @Josephbburg * Whatever it is, it's faster, more versatile, and straight-up better looking than anything available in Cycle's post-processing haha