Auddomate Docs

Finishing

Glow and glare

The finishing touches of a real camera lens: a soft halo around the brightest light, and star-shaped rays on tiny highlights.

A look on top, never in the light

A real camera lens adds a little of its own character to bright light: a soft halo around it, and sometimes star-shaped rays. Auddomate adds these after it has finished calculating the light, the way a lens does, so they never change the render itself. Both are off by default, and you'll find them under the Render tab.

A chrome ball and a matte ball in sunlight, without glow or glare
Off. The light exactly as calculated.
The same balls with strong glow and a 6-point glare on the sun's reflection
Strong glow, 6-point glare. The tiny reflection of the sun in the chrome ball blooms into a six-pointed star.

Glow

Glow lets the brightest parts of your render spill a soft halo into their surroundings: light strips seen through glass, sun glints on chrome, the hot spot on a gold cap.

  • Subtle is a gentle softening, almost invisible until you turn it off.
  • Strong is a clear, cinematic bloom.

Glare

Glare adds star-shaped rays to point-like highlights, like those from the blades of a camera's aperture. Choose a 4-point, 6-point or 8-point star.

Rays only come from tiny, very bright highlights, like a sun glint on chrome or a sparkle on a gem, which is where a real camera produces them. Broad bright areas, like a softbox or a window, simply glow instead of being stamped into a star. The rays are brightest right at the highlight and thin out quickly, the way light really spreads through a lens.

When you save

JPEG, PNG and 16-bit TIFF include glow and glare exactly as you see them on screen. EXR files stay clean, so you can add your own in Photoshop, Nuke or After Effects.