CT_GLARE
Enhanced Lensflare & Bloom postprocessing effects for Blender.
Controls
Most of the properties display useful tips when you hover your mouse over them.
Lensflare effects:
Glare: Star shaped glare Dispersion: Adds subtle variations in tones and chroma
Bloom: Simulates the glow around bright objects caused by light scattering in eyes and cameras
Streaks: Directional streaks
Ghosts: Lens flare
Rays: Faux volumetric lighting
Chromatic: Aberration & chroma lens flare
Offset: Faux lens reflections
Post-processing effects:
Dirt: Adds texture to your render
Noise: Smooths out the image and covers up denoising artifacts
Vignette: Darken the edges of your render to draw focus to the center
Color: Hue, saturation & colorize
Threshold: Pixels brighter than this value will be affected by the glare filter
Settings Compositor Device: Set to GPU for improved performance. Camera Passepartout: Darkens the outside area of the camera to improve the GLARE viewport experience.
Previews: Isolates the effect to easily preview the changes each control makes.
FAQ
Known Issues:
Using languages other than English may cause problems activating the addon. If you're experiencing issues, use Blender in English.
Can’t see the effect?
Re-enable the addon by clicking the green button at the top
Make sure there is enough light in your scene & there are objects to reflect the light. Low roughness materials will react stronger to GLARE
Enable the Viewport & Render buttons, disable Pass
Hard to control the intensity?
Set your desired strength using the Global Power first, then tweak the modules using their power controls
Greyed out module?
This means the module’s power is set to 0. Open the module and crank it up
Red header / controls?
Disable preview at the bottom right of that module
Temporarily disable the addon?
Disable using the green button at the top
Performance
Camera view and making your viewport window smaller improves performance
Notes
The addon only works in Blender 4.2+.
Generally, the effects are applied in the order they appear in the node group. For example; the 'color' controls don't affect the 'chromatic' effects.
The post-processing effects only affect the GLARE output. However, the noise & chromatic effects can be switched to affect the whole render using the 'Global' controls.
The default values and limits of the controls are tuned to AGX colorspace and default Blender HDRIs
If the effects aren't strong enough, you should probably increase your light or HDRI intensity. Using a low roughness & metal for your material can also increase the intensity of the GLARE.
You can push the values of the controls past the limit by typing in your desired amount into the fields.
Hit backspace to revert values to default.
Transparent Background in Post with Render Passes
Because of the way bloom & glare is applied to images, it's impossible to render the effect to a PNG or video with transparency.
However it is possible to render in passes (i.e. layers), which allows you to add backgrounds and even control the intensity of glare in the post-processing app of your choice (Photoshop, Davinci, AE etc.). It's quite simple once you understand how to set it up, and gives you a lot of control after render.
Set up the nodes in the compositor like below. The yellow nodes are called Mix Color. Add a File Output node and add three inputs in the N-panel on the right. Now connect the nodes to the inputs. Set the base path to wherever you want to save your render. It's important you choose a file output that supports transparency (i.e. PNG RGBA).
Set film to transparent under Render settings
Now render your image or animation as you always do. You'll find the passes in the location you picked on the File Output node.
In your post-processing app, add the layers in this order: glare, base, mask. Set glare and base passes to ADD or LIGHTEN blend mode. (Sometimes LIGHTEN looks more accurate)
Now you can add any background you want below these passes. You can also adjust the glare using any effect like curves, hue, gradient map etc.
Installation
Make sure you have Blender 4.2 or higher installed
DO NOT unzip the file. Install the addon (tutorial)
The addon will take care of all the settings. Do not add the node group to the compositor yourself. It will override any old versions you have installed. You don't even need to open the compositor.
Find GLARE in the N-panel or Render Tab. Enable the addon by clicking the green icon at the top
Make sure there is enough light in your scene & there are objects to reflect the light. Low roughness materials will react stronger to GLARE
* If you have GLARE 3.0 installed, CT_BLOOM will be hidden
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