Camera Post FX

Camera Post FX allow you to recreate Lens imperfections and Camera Sensor effects such as Film Grain and Sharpen. These effects are using Blender Compositing, which is now visible in realtime in the Viewport in Blender 3.5.

• Distortion: Creates Barrel distortion (value > 0) or Pincushion distortion (value < 0).

  • Type Simple: uses Blender Lens Distortion Node.

  • Type STMap:  uses an STMap to distort the image.
    An STMap is an HDR float image that corresponds to the UVs of the image. If you want to learn more about creating STMaps from video footage, please watch this video.
    STMap library folder can be set in the Preferences.
    Tip: Andy Davis kindly created and shared for free a library of STMaps: https://imag4media.com/vfx-rnd/ (look for 2023 Aug14 post).

• Lateral Chromatic Aberration: Lateral Chromatic Aberration is only towards the corners of the image in high-contrast areas. Blue and purple fringing is often common on some fisheye, wide-angle and low-quality lenses. Unlike Longitudinal Chromatic Aberration, Lateral Chromatic Aberration cannot be removed by stopping down the lens, but can be removed or reduced in post-processing software.

  • Dispersion uses Blender Lens Distortion node and creates a rainbow colored fringe. 

  • Red/Cyan, Green/Magenta, Blue/Yellow lets you pick the different color type of Chromatic Aberration.

• Lens Softness: Adds blur to the image to simulate lens softness in the corners of the image.
  In real life, the sharpness of the lens is also affected by the aperture value, where wide-open is often softer. Stopping down the lens to high f-stop values (above f/8) also creates diffraction which makes the image slightly blurry.

  • Blur Size: maximum amount of blur that would be visible in the corners of the image.

  • Center Softness: Amount of blur in the Center of the image. 0 makes the image completely sharp in the center.

  • Corner Falloff: Controls the gradient of the Radial mask that defines Corners of the image.

  • Scale X and Y: Size of Radial mask used to control where the Corner blur is visible.

• Fringing: Adds Color fringing from bright pixels. Generally purple and visible in areas of strong contrasts.

  • Size: Size of the bleeding of bright pixels.

  • Threshold: Value over which a pixel is considered bright and will contribute to fringing.

  • Color: Usually purple in real life.

• Bloom:

  • Type: Gaussian, Glare Fog Glow, Glare Bloom.
    Each type renders different bloom differently. Gaussian is an alternative to the old Glare Fog Glow that did not scale properly in the Viewport and would not match the final render. It also allows for stretching.
    Glare Bloom type is available from Blender 4.4.

  • Stretch Ratio (Only available with Gaussian type): Allows for horizontal or vertical stretching (0.5 will be square)

  • Saturation and Tint: Increase saturation of the rendered image that is used for bloom or multiply it with a Tint Color.

• Streaks: Adds streaked type of bloom using Blender's Glare node.

• Vignetting: Darkens the corners of the image.

  • Falloff: Controls the gradient of the Radial mask where the Vignetting appears.

  • Scale X and Y: Size of Radial mask used to control where the Vignetting appears.

• Sharpen: Increases or decreases image sharpness. Negative value can be used to soften the image.

  • Radius: Controls the radius of the sharpness effect.

• Film Grain: Adds Film grain to the renders using an image as Overlay. It is automatically animated using the frame number.
  If you need to create your own Film Grain texture, make sure to use a base of a 50% linear gray.
  Film Grain library folder can be set in the Preferences.

  • Size: Scales the Film Grain overlay. For consistency it is recommended to match the Film Grain texture resolution to your render resolution.