Glare Node Remake/ Lens Flare Compositing Node

The common and usual way to add glow to a cycles render is the Glare Node. This Node analyses the image to find the brightest pixels, and adds a "Glare" Effect to said pixels. There are four options that one can choose: "Ghosts", "Streaks", "Fog Glow" and "Simple Star". (Tho "Fog Glow" is generally the preferred mode)

But let me explain why this Node is certainly not living up to its potential:

1. The four options mentioned above, are extremely basic and do not fully resemble real-world Lens Flares. (With only "Fog Glow" being fairly usable")

[Proposed new Effects are in the Thumbnail]

2. No Mask Input possible: The Node can only Input the full RGB colour Input without any possibility to Mask the desired areas in the image that need to be exclusively highlighted. That leaves the user to fiddle with unintuitive Threshold-Sliders within the Node.

3. Only one effect per Node possible: The UI within the Node is designed in a way, that forces you to use multiple nodes if you want more than one effect. That becomes very likely since realistic Lens Flares have many diffrent details and parts that are a result, of the complex Lens-arrangements, that are producing them. Having to use more than one Glare node at a time, also contributes to my next point:

4. Poor Performance: Adding only one Glare node into the Composition can slow down the rendering process immensely. (However, that might be resolved as part of the upcoming Compositor performance improvements)

My basic proposal: (This in only an Example!)

INPUT: Mask Input (BW) (Black: Off White: Glare)

Colour image: (If not plugged in: Output Alpha+Flares)

NODE: Pricipled BSDF Style Node with Sliders for each effect (Turn off effect by sliding slider to 0)

1. Position (Along the axis beween light source and image centre) [Effect an all Glare effects in Node]

2. Cromatic Ring (Saturation 0-1)

3. Ghosts (Amount 0-20) (Size 0-1)

4. Streaks (Intensity 0-1) (Imperfection)

5. Glow (Intensity 0-1)

6. Particles (Amount 0-50) (Size 0-1)

7. Tint (RGB Colour input) (Colour varience)

OUTPUT:

RGB: Image+Flares (If Image is plugged in)

BW: Flares on top of Alpha

And thats it.

This post was inspired by the recent development of the nitisha sky model that replaced an inferior node, with onee that I use everyday. I can only hope that the same will happen to the Glare node too!

Thank you for your attention. :)

Marcel