Tim Nikias recently wrote something in SDL that makes a softglow on specular
highlights. The code I wrote is another approch to obtain the same effect,
but they are all inefficient compared to postprocessing in C++. MegaPOV0.7
had such a solution on an experimental basis along with motion_blur and
faked focal_blur. I'm not sure wether these features have been dropped.

The softglow is a blurred copy of the image, added to the original image,
using a "lighten" combination. Bright spots (with a brightness above 1) will
be mostly affected. Well, provided the format hasn't already been cropped to
24 bit (8 bit luminance).

The reason for having softglows is to simulate a camera or a human eye, that
catches a strong light and spread it around the lens. The same effect
results in flares. In addition, sometimes a photographer uses a blurring
lens for glamour shots; weddings or portraits.

I've searched on google but couldn't find great examples. So here's just the
docs from the implementation in MegaPOV:
http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/geomformats/megapovplus/#PP_Soft_Glow

And a small example:
http://users.skynet.be/bs936509/povfr1/concept1/povfr-gs-pp.htm

Regards,
Hugo

Post a reply to this message