Our seamless bloom algorithm is currently only available for our 360 live camera but it is currently in development to apply it to Movie Render Queue. Until that is complete, please use the tips below.
Bloom can cause seams due to a disparity between the six camera faces arising from screen-space calculation mismatches. For example, you can see that the light doesn't radiate at the bottom of the column correctly in the image below.
- In most cases, adding a Face Blend Percentage can clean this up (as below). Start with 5% and increase as you need. (N.B. this will increase the size of each face that you are rendering so will have a performance impact).
- When the camera is moving quickly, seams may still be visible, this can be mitigated by adding temporal Anti Aliasing Samples.
- In the case of highly complex bloom, currently we would recommend adding bloom in Post Production Software such as DaVinci Resolve or After Effects.
Light Shaft Bloom
This effect is based on the sensation of having light leaking through a surface’s gaps from above in a dappled ‘God Ray’ effect. Because this effect is based on a light ray being above the head of the of the viewer, it poses problems for the 6 faces of the 360 camera.
- Below is an example of some light shafts having an effect through the trees when looking upwards at a Directional Light:
- Below is the same location, looking forward, we can see that there are no light shafts visible:
- With a 360 camera in the same location we see this same difference in Screen-space calculation causing a harsh line where the Directional Light is no longer part of the Light Shaft Screen-space calculation for the front face.
- By adding a Face Blend Percentage of 10 the light shaft’s edge has been softened. In most cases this will be enough to prevent the seam from being visibly distracting.
- If there is a Light shaft that is an important part of some visual storytelling in the scene, Fog Cards can be a good way to bake in a light shaft effect that more effectively works for 360 rendering.
- This is because the Fog Card exists independent of any Screen-space Calculations by being a mesh with a semi transparent material in the scene. You can see the improvement in the output, using a Fog Card, below.
