Lens Glare or flare

[F13Design]

Is there a built in Lens Flare or Lens Glare for Corona, or do you have to do it in Post Production. Thanks!

[Juraj]

There is none right now. I didn't try it for some time, but VrayLensEffect used to work as well since it's PostEffect, just in framebuffer from channel.

But this would be great addition...if it wasn't so confusing as the one in Vray, which I never used rather. Both for efficiency and consistency sake, having glare&flares in framebuffer before heading to post,
is great feature of 'wysiwyg' workflow.

[juang3d]

Agree, and it can be better if you can save them as a separate render element :)

Cheers.

[Bormax]

There is none right now. I didn't try it for some time, but VrayLensEffect used to work as well since it's PostEffect, just in framebuffer from channel.

But this would be great addition...if it wasn't so confusing as the one in Vray, which I never used rather. Both for efficiency and consistency sake, having glare&flares in framebuffer before heading to post,
is great feature of 'wysiwyg' workflow.

I tryed to use VrayLensEffect but it doesn't work for me. Do you do something else than just add it to the list of effects in Environment dialog to make it works?

[vkiuru]

I´m usually of the opinion that this can easily be achieved in post production but lately I´ve felt either this or some implementation of "multilight" to interactively change light intensity/hue would be something I´d be interested to see in Corona. Many of the latest additions (warning messages and such) haven´t been too exciting - these would bring something fresh to the table ;)

[Juraj]

I´m usually of the opinion that this can easily be achieved in post production but lately I´ve felt either this or some implementation of "multilight" to interactively change light intensity/hue would be something I´d be interested to see in Corona. Many of the latest additions (warning messages and such) haven´t been too exciting - these would bring something fresh to the table ;)

Yeah this one is must-have. I didn't even know that's what's VrayLightSelect channel is for.

Glares/flares in framebuffer are super nice because they help you position your lights to cm precision to get that perfect counter-light/haze/etc... With post-production you don't achieve quite the same.
I think we should stop with the mentality that renderer is only there to give us some half-baked result because that's the workflow from VFX and times long gone. It should look perfect/finished as it is, just like photography,
only you can greatly improve or alter it in post, but only if you want. It shouldn't be a necessarary step without which, it is incomplete.

Renderer should not equal just to ray-tracer. It should be full package, if there is something to be taken from current real-time packages.

[agentdark45]

I´m usually of the opinion that this can easily be achieved in post production but lately I´ve felt either this or some implementation of "multilight" to interactively change light intensity/hue would be something I´d be interested to see in Corona. Many of the latest additions (warning messages and such) haven´t been too exciting - these would bring something fresh to the table ;)

Yeah this one is must-have. I didn't even know that's what's VrayLightSelect channel is for.

Glares/flares in framebuffer are super nice because they help you position your lights to cm precision to get that perfect counter-light/haze/etc... With post-production you don't achieve quite the same.
I think we should stop with the mentality that renderer is only there to give us some half-baked result because that's the workflow from VFX and times long gone. It should look perfect/finished as it is, just like photography,
only you can greatly improve or alter it in post, but only if you want. It shouldn't be a necessarary step without which, it is incomplete.

Renderer should not equal just to ray-tracer. It should be full package, if there is something to be taken from current real-time packages.

Totally agree, I've been requesting a physical / photographic glare feature for ages in Corona. Rather than just a simple light intensity VFB effect we could do some really cool things if we take into account the geometry of the scene, for example some trees in front of the sun tied in with volumetrics and realistic camera lens glare - that would make Corona truly stand out from other packages.

This would also solve the issue of the harsh and flat highlight effect when rendering things like cars. Realistic metallic flake glints? Yes please!

[peterguthrie]

lens effects like this would be great to have in Corona, its the only thing that's stopping Henry moving over to Corona. He's like a magpie, he likes shiny sparkly things.

[Ondra]

Renderer should not equal just to ray-tracer. It should be full package, if there is something to be taken from current real-time packages.

Well.. currently renderers are by far the biggest plugins in 3dsmax. It would be really nice if we could focus less on things like proxy and scatter, and more on light transport. I personally did not touch light transport for about a year...

[Juraj]

I agree on proxy and scatter, definitely on scatter, because that has almost nothing to do with visual representation but instead of scene creation/management.

But glares/flares are natural part of lens look which renderer is trying to simulate, so there isn't right argument why it needs to be detached as part of post-production.
It's just as natural part as tonemapping imho.

I didn't implied it should compete with something even more important such as light transport...but that's resource management on your side, we're not choosing and deciding what you will invest your time in :- ).
For all I care as user is I want everything, won't feel guilty because of that :- )

[pokoy]

You guys realize that what you're asking for is - in the real world - highly dependent on the lens and its design, camera type, sensor etc? I'm not sure if it wouldn't just look artificially, small glares around highlights probably not but anything like larger flares wouldn't probably cut it. I guess it's better to leave that to the post production stage. Has something like this been done anywhere? And, most importantly, does it look convincing?

I'd ask for some lower hanging fruits like a more flexible bokeh setup with a rounding option, falloff, distortions and rotations close to the frame border.

[Juraj]

No ones said it shouldn't be flexible, everybody (stop with the "you guys" assuming people are imbeciles on forums) is fully aware these are based on in-camera effects and whether the controls would be photography or artistically based is arbitrary.

Yes it's been done elsewhere pretty successfully, I would say Maxwell ones look most convincing but Vray updated the solution quite as well. (it's also in Indigo, Thea, but also Unreal engine and...pretty common feature actually).

[pokoy]

"you guys"

Didn't intend to offend anyone, no implications from my side. Just meant as a pointer to how difficult (or impossible) it may be to get the look right since it hasn't been mentioned here.

[rambambulli]

Couldn't agree more to adding flare glare and some sort of multilight feature. For me ( ex Maxwell user and archviz amateur) the only thing I missed when leaving Maxwell and focusing totally on Corona is the "in between production" features.

I am not an expert like you guys (you guy means experts here not imbeciles :) ) so I have to test a lot before getting a nice image.

Especially multilight is great.

Because corona has such great results without post production I try to minimize my post production process every time. Because as an architect I use corona more and more for sketchy fases of a project and present them (almost on the fly) to my clients. So my designs may change a lot during the design process. In this case it would saves a humongous amount of Photoshop time!

I know it has been discussed before on the forum before: How much can you already enhance in 3ds max/the vfb? I would say never enough!

[peterguthrie]

Is there vignetting in corona yet? if not that would be very high up my wishlist... and for the same reasons Juraj mentioned when talking about glare/bloom. When done in post vignetting often just doesnt look as good as it should do because its often done on a LDR image. Vray has vignetting on by default - I dont want to get into a debate on whether that is a good idea or not, but I find it interesting that probably 95% of the time I leave it on.

Apologies if vignetting has already been added, just coming back to corona after 2 or 3 massive vray projects!