All language subtitles for 1B_03

Arguably the first thing that comes to mind when
talking about post-processing and lighting effects

is glare. glare or blooming is the optical effect
where light from bright source appears to leak

into surrounding objects. by default the Blender
glare node takes the bright glints that go above

the threshold of 1 and adds these little
streaks. by the way you can press M to mute

the note temporarily and M to bring it back. so the
core of the effect is just to detect the brightest

pixels falling outside a certain threshold and
then you can add the fog low to them for example.

to work in a physically plausible manner
it totally depends on the scene referred

data, the type of data Blender uses by
default for its calculations when we hit

the render button or otherwise to preserve
the dynamic range as we have mentioned you

you have to use the open exr format or any
other 32-bit unbounded scene referred format.

in addition to glare we can try to simulate
different types of photographic blooming

effects, for example simulating diffusion filters,
these type of filters or in some cases dabbing

Vaseline directly onto the lens is used to
create a hazy, dreamy glow. we won't keep it

in our main setup, but let's have a look at this
effect just for the sake of off topic. if you feel

like borrowing this effect from photography
and cinematography for that matter, we can go

with the mix filter, god... what I'm saying... it's not
filter, it's a mix node and then we add the blur

filter which expects our image as an input, so
we should probably plug the glare output there...

so far we don't see anything spectacular
and that is because we need to connect it

to the second socket of the mix node, then
what I usually do is strike the relative

checkbox to make it non-dependent on the scene
resolution and then up the X and Y blur values

to be fair... uh... to make it look uniform we
should also play with the aspect correction,

I will check the Y aspect correction, as for
the amount of blurriness I want it to be

fairly dreamy and hazy, but still retain
some bigger shapes if that makes sense.

now to make it shine the mix factor should be
switched over to add. the add mode is one of the

safest blending modes when working with the scene
referred light data, add, multiply... what else? mix

pretty much everything else is broken when when
working with the unbounded light values. all right

but now we have to compensate the exposure and we
can do it of course with the help of the exposure

node or just by using good old RGB curves. trying
to eyeball or rather approximate the brightness.

okay now it should be possible to compare
before and after by muting these two nodes

and toggling them back on. all right, it is
dreamy, it is hazy... it is 90s as hell :) probably

not my type of effect, not always at least and
still it has its place in very small doses, uh...

to unify the light values ever so slightly
across the image, something like that anyway.

so that is another filter from photography that
we can try to simulate using compositor nodes.

but meanwhile let's get rid of our soft
diffusion setup and take a step back.

so once upon the compositor there was
a glare node. let's start from here.

now moving on to copying some other mistakes of
photographic image formations such as chromatic

aberration within the lens and it's also known
as color fringing and it produces the colorful

outlines around the edges of the objects, it
can be an unwanted or highly desirable effect

depending on your style, but if we talk about
CG lighting, it's fairly important to know how

to pepper your image up with such "mistakes". in
Blender the easiest way to achieve chromatic

aberration is to use the lens distortion
node and then crank up the dispersion value.

it just blew the picture up into this kind
of colorful mess which proves that every

effect should be used in moderation :) and when
we set the mode to projector it is much more

bearable, much more palatable. the amount
of dispersion or chromatic aberration is

a matter of personal preference, but I like it
in both CG and in photography for that matter.

there is something very attractive in the idea
of the different wavelengths of light splitting

inside the lens to produce this effect. kind of
reveals the inner working of light that passes

through the lens, which shows that the lens is
very complex object indeed. there is a certain

how should I put it... an image formation depth about
it and some people there say that it looks *good*.

following the theme of the optical aberrations
that should degrade the image but actually make

it look better, here is another one, the vignette
effect that is often associated with the retro

lenses. the vignette effect is all about darkening
the edges of the image, as simple as that and we

can do it procedurally in Blender compositor.
I'm going to go matte and add the ellipse mask.

The mask should go into the mix factor of
our newly created mix node, there should be

this type of white ellipse right in the center of
the screen, we need to scale its width and height

so it's approximately touching the edges like that.
so the width of 1 and the height of 0.4 something

gets the job done. now it has to be inverted, so the
mix node affects the edges of the image only and

obviously if we are aiming to get the darkening
effect the color should be made darker. there...

as for the blending mode I have just said
that everything aside multiply, add and

mix is a blunder and here I myself set the
mix mode to soft light, but okay, fair enough :D

the blur node can be used to
gradually soften the edges of the mask

and the intensity of the effect is basically
controlled by altering the shade of gray...

can't stop thinking about the blending mode... we
should change it... and true, multiply is way safer.

add, multiply and mix just doesn't screw the
colors, these operations are perfectly linear,

perfectly safe for the scene referred linear type
of data. all right cool, so that was the darkening

around the edges effect aka the retro vignetting
effect, it's classic, it's timeless and elegant and

very easy to do. that is why it's always welcome
to our cinematic post-processing effects party.