Table of Contents
Blender has introduced a new feature that allows you to composite your scenes in real time using GPU acceleration. In this blog, I will show you how to use this powerful and fast tool to Explore your mind.
Enable Blender Realtime Compositor
- Go to the menu and choose one of the options: Camera or Always. Camera will apply the real-time compositing to the camera view, while Always will apply it to the whole render view.
- Make sure that the compositor is not disabled, which is the default setting. This will use the offline version of the compositor, which is slower and less interactive.
Flipping
One way to refresh your perception of your composition is to mirror it horizontally. You can do this in the compositor by adding a flip node from the distort menu. But before you do that, make sure you enable the use nodes option, otherwise it won’t work. This is a crucial step, so don’t forget it. Mirroring your image on the x-axis can help you evaluate the balance and harmony of your elements.
Viewport Black and White
In Blender Realtime Compositor I have always wanted to see the viewport in black and white, and now I can! By using the hue saturation value node and reducing the saturation, I can turn the viewport into grayscale. This is very useful for both checking and improving your composition, as well as exploring some amazing artistic possibilities. Imagine creating a whole project in black and white, from start to finish.
Viewport Glare
If you want to add some glare to your scene in Blender Realtime Compositor, you have two options. One is to use the glare filter node, which has a lot of settings to customize the streaks and the intensity of the effect. The other option is to use the blur node, which can create a more traditional glare effect. Here’s how you do it:
- Connect your end layer to the blur node and adjust the size and type of the blur.
- Add a mix node and plug in the blurred image and the original image.
- Change the blend mode of the mix node to add. This will create a light diffusion effect.
- To control how the glare fades out, you can add an RGB curves node and tweak the curve shape
Lens Distortion
I was so excited to try the Blender Realtime Compositor system that the first thing I did was adding some lens distortion to the whole scene. I love the chromatic aberration effect! I used the projector mode and cranked up the dispersion value. It looked amazing and it was super fast. It’s one of those easy tricks that can make a big difference in your scene
Color Correction
We can use different color grading techniques to enhance the appearance of our scene. For example, we can blend some color with the original image using the multiply or color blend modes. This can create a more interesting and realistic look
We can use the color balance node, which gives us more control over the shadows, midtones, and highlights. We can change the contrast and color of our image in many ways with this node, but we won’t go into details here. The best part is that it all works in real time, so we can experiment with different settings.
The RGB curves node is also very useful for post processing. We can use it to fine-tune the contrast and color of our image. We can also do some creative things with it, such as changing the response of each color channel.
Check the video here