[SOLVED] Light glows and corona stars

[Guest shane.ploenges]

Hi, i have been trying to achieve the star like glows you see on lights at night time. I realise you can turn on the "cross" option for HDR, but this is not the correct effect as it then affects everything in the scene, not just the lights. Also this is very limited as it only has 8 points maximum - the glows around lights you see at night can seem to have many many lines radiating from them in the glow.

 

here is an example linked below of what i am talking about in the car and street lamps in the image. I thought at first this might be able to be done with the emission map with an appropriate mask to control the glow - but it does not seem to work like that.

 

I guess if Unigine cannot do this already as one of its effects, we could use billboards to achieve the desired effect.

http://ecobackup.fr/11342.jpg

[steve3d]

Unigine of course can do that..

 

check Render Setting->HDR setting.

[Guest shane.ploenges]

Steve thanks for the reply, but if you read my post you can see that HDR does not produce the correct affect as it affects everything in the scene - even things that are not lights.

Also the HDR "cross" setting which is what i think you are talking about does not produce enough streaks/star points for a realistic effect.

[steve3d]

you need the emissive texture to enhance the effects.

[manguste]

You can easily create flares at night time just from car and street lamps.

Check the image below: there are no cross flares from candle fire, while you can see them on a candlestick.

 

 

It is done in the following way:

1. Enable HDR and disable Glow in the main menu. Enable cross flares in Render settings -> HDR -> Cross.
   
2. Set Cross -> Threshold high enough so that no objects create flares.
   
3. Go to car material -> States -> enable Ambient emission option.
   
4. Load emission texture, if necessary that specifies what car parts will be emissive and with flares. For example, only car headlights.
   
5. Go to Parameters and increase Emission Scale until flares appear.
   

 

Also this is very limited as it only has 8 points maximum - the glows around lights you see at night can seem to have many many lines radiating from them in the glow.

We can increase the maximum possible number of flares for you.

[Guest shane.ploenges]

Thanks manguste - Ii was unsure what the threshhold setting did. I will try this out.

 

Also in regards to increasing the number of streaks.. it is not really super important, however i think everyone could benefit by having this set a bit high for the maximum like 24 or 32 or something. Thanks

 

Also would it be possible to have a thickness setting? Sometimes they seem very thick, it would be good to be able to have many small thin streaks like you see in real life lights, or is this already possible with a different setting somewhere?

 

Thanks

[manguste]

Thickness is also controlled via Threshold and Cross Scale parameters, no magic, simply technology :) You just need to tweak their proportion to achieve the needed thickness. For example, high Scale and high Threshold results in thin streaks.