Blender Glare / Post FX Overhaul
There have already been a couple of requests about updating either the Glare Node itself, or the way it is implemented in the compositor/while saving and fact is: It's very very outdated.
Cycles ( i know the Glare and Post FX are not Cycles specific but are part of the rendering process) has gone through some big changes since late 2.79, and keeps on improving with the Principled Shader v2, pushing towards photorealism.
Having had experiences with Octane, Corona, V-Ray and Redshift over the years, Cycles is capable of producing near identical results on many many aspects, BUT when it comes to any kind of "Lens Imperfections", Lens Flares, Post FX, call it what you want, you really feel the stone age state of things there.
Talking about the Glare Node specifically: Let it be the limited and confusing controls, the absurdly sloppy & unrealistic results (compared to Octane or Corona/Vray for example) or the fact that the calculation is unbelievably slow. There is even no simple way to simply export solely the Glare Node Result as an exr file.
I am not trying to belittle any of the great work the current and/or previous Blender Team has done- Quite the opposite
I will forever be thankful for such a great software, and proud to back it for as long as I work.
This aspect of rendering/post Fx/compositing must not be overlooked, and needs some serious updates in my opinion, and of many i have read from online. For Blender to play in the Big leagues, in high(er) end productions, it's necessary to have the flexibility of giving the renders this needed final touch, without funny workarounds, unsufficient results or having to rely on different editing software options, which also often lack the fexlbility you can have, when done correctly within the render software itself.
Here are some comparison Pictures below. First Example is Blender's Glare Node- The rest ist Corona
You could change the result from blender slightly, but what you see here is basically what you get more or less.
See the difference for yourself.
9 Comments
As maintainer of the compositor I always had a love hate relationship with the glare node. Personally I want to replace the node for many years, or keep the old node for legacy reasons.
The viewport compositor shown that the node glare isn’t scalable and Omar did a great job to keep the results close to the original implementations.
One plan that will be executed soon is to move the bloom effect from eevee to the compositor, what makes sense.
Wait, what? Does this mean I'll be forced to use the compositor to create a bloom effect, even though I'm rendering it as a separate layer and compositing in After Effects?
Please, no.
so what's the glare?
yeah glare node could use some new modes , now withthe realtime compositior theres so many glare/bloom/glow shaders which can be ripped off directly and just put as new option in glare node
I would love to see this happen, thanks Andrej!
we need this a lot in architectural visualization. Please developers add this to blender - cycles, it's one of the things I miss the most when doing architectural visualization.
I love how the glares looks in corona, but in cycles simple just looks off, we also need glares in real time render that will be super cool.
Actually all things in corona is well designed & optimized just for archviz and photorealism purposes, maybe some addon functionality could do whatever you want. actually the creative freedom of blender is a priority of blender team rather to add functionalities that corporates implement features for their specific niche. this is just my way of thinking which maybe wrong as well.
Hi there!
Yeah that's true, Corona is biggest amongst Archviz artists, but also very popular with Automotive Artists!
There is some kind of payed addon, but it's plain fakery and works nothing like this function should do.
And Of course, blender (Cycles) is and should stay the creative multipurpose powerhouse it is, but updating/improving the Glare Node, or adding Post Camera FX wouldn't change any of that- it would just open more doors, rather than being a specific niche function- Glare is everywhere and not only useful for photorealistic Architecture Renders :)