Images for this guide are here
Camera Series
Octane Camera: Settings & Effects
Version 2.0, Updated Apr 2024 using Octane 2023.1.2 and Cinema 4D 2024.4
About This Guide
This guide is part of a series that looks at Octane’s Camera system as it exists in Cinema 4D. The concepts translate to other DCCs, but there are likely quirks and idiosyncrasies that may require different workflows to get the same results.
If you’re new to photography or want a more general background or refresher on it, there’s a Photography Concepts for 3D Artists guide that talks about how cameras work and how that relates to 3D in general. It might be worth a look before going through this one.
This guide explores the important settings for a Thin Lens type camera - where all the focus/shutter/distortion/etc settings are. It doesn’t cover alternate projections like Fisheye, Isometric, or Equirectangular. Those will be in a separate guide.
PDF Version of this guide can be found here
Downloads
Downloads for this guide can be found here
Part I: The Basics
The Octane Camera simulates most of the properties of a real-world camera. If we’re familiar with how this works, much of that knowledge will translate over. If not, it defaults to a simple mode that kind of works like a point-and-shoot or a phone cam, which is just enough to get an image out the door.
Important: Coming from a photography background, the biggest difference between a real camera system and Octane is how exposure (the apparent brightness of the scene) is handled. Aperture and shutter speed do NOT affect exposure like they do in a physical camera, and there’s no real concept of ISO. Proper exposure should be achieved in Octane by dialing in the lighting.
Aside from that, the calculations are correct when we use real-world scale objects in our scene. If our humans are human-sized and our buildings are building-sized (and not vice-versa), then the Octane camera will behave the same way a real one does when we compose our scene.
With that out of the way, let’s look at how the Octane Camera is implemented in C4D.
The Octane Camera
The Octane camera is actually just a C4D-native camera object that has an Octane Camera tag on it. This rig is found in the Live Viewer under the Objects menu. Both the C4D camera object and the Octane Camera tag have settings that affect what we see in the scene, so we’ll need to bounce between them.
Octane can use a native C4D camera that doesn’t have an Octane Camera tag on it, but many of the key settings like depth of field, motion blur, post effects, and pretty much everything aside from the focal length will not work.
Any C4D camera can be turned into an Octane Camera by selecting the camera, and going into the Object Manager’s Tags menu, in Extensions>c4doctane tags, and selecting Octane Camera tag.
In general, it’s best to use the Octane Camera tag unless there’s a very specific reason not to (compatibility with other engines, maybe).
Important: Before we get any further, the #1 troubleshooting step that applies to beginners and advanced users alike is this: If changing a setting doesn’t seem to be having any effect in the render, we need to make sure we have the right camera active in the Render Viewport. It seems pretty obvious, but when we’re dealing with a scene with multiple cameras (or sometimes even just one), this is really easy to forget and leads to a lot of frustration.
Camera Types vs. Modes
As of this writing, Octane has six camera types (Thinlens, Universal, Panoramic, Baking, OSL, and OSL Baking). Many of them have overlapping functionality, which can get confusing.
Camera Type is selected at the top of the tab that’s originally marked “Thinlens”, but the tab name changes as the camera type changes.
Camera modes are available in the Universal and Panoramic types in a dropdown labeled “Camera mode” for Universal and “Projection” for Panoramic. Thinlens has an orthographic “mode” that’s set by checking a checkbox. The chart below shows the overlapping functionality between camera types.
In this guide, we’re going to look at the Thin Lens and Universal camera types.
The Thin Lens Camera is the default “basic” camera that’s akin to a point-and-shoot or phone camera. It’s the default type, and allows us to just chuck a camera in, set a few basic settings, get a few fun effects, and off to the races we go.
The Universal Camera has all of the functionality of the Thin Lens camera, plus a lot more. This is “pro mode” for Octane camera users. Most of what’s in Part II of this guide is unique to the Universal camera.
Both the Thin Lens and Universal cameras default to a perspective projection. Perspective projection is what we’re used to seeing in the real world. Straight lines stay straight, an object that’s closer to us appears larger than the same object further back in the distance, and parallel lines converge as they go back into space. Other projections (parallel/isometric, equirectangular, etc) will be covered in a future guide.
Potentially confusing: The Thinlens camera mode for the Universal camera type is different from the Thin Lens camera type.
The Thin Lens camera type doesn’t have a concept of “modes” - it’s either perspective (default), or orthographic if we check that checkbox.
The Universal camera does have modes. Its perspective projection mode is called “Thinlens” (:/), and then we need to change the mode using a second dropdown menu if we want different projections. The rest of the modes use alternate projections, which we’ll cover in more detail in the next guide.
Focal Length
Made with LightStage assets and Symmetrical Garden 02 by Poly Haven
This is set in C4D’s Camera Object settings, not in the Octane Camera Tag. This controls magnification, and background compression. 50mm is closest to what the human eye sees. Wider lenses (smaller focal length values) are for landscapes and epic scenes with more stuff in them. Longer lenses (larger focal length values) are for portraits and isolating a single subject. This should be set early on as it affects the composition of the scene quite a bit.
Focus
Like a real camera, the Octane camera has a concept of focusing. When we drop in a new Octane camera and look through it, EVERYTHING is in focus. This is because the Aperture setting defaults to zero.
Having everything in focus is much faster to render and makes it easier to place objects to dial in our composition. After everything is in place, we might want to limit what’s in focus, and for that, we’ll need a Focus Distance (also sometimes called a focus point, but VERY different from the Focal Length setting).
Auto Focus
By default, Auto Focus is turned on in the Octane Camera Tag. This works similarly to the auto focus setting in a real-world camera when it’s set to fixed center point mode. It basically projects a perpendicular line from the center of the sensor out, and the first thing it hits sets the focus distance. As we move the camera around, the distance changes depending on what’s now the center of the frame. If the camera is aimed at an area of the scene where there are no objects, the focus distance will revert to the value set in the C4D Camera Object’s Focus Distance setting.
Like in a real camera, sometimes this is fine, but more often it’s frustrating and gets in the way.
Manual Focus
Important: To avoid most of the weirdness with this system, if we want to set the focus distance manually, we need to make sure Auto Focus in the Octane Camera tag is turned off
The Cinema 4D Camera Object itself has a Focus Distance setting. This is pretty much a last resort for focusing that only works under a very particular set of circumstances (auto focus in the Camera Tag is on and nothing in the middle of the frame, or auto focus is off and Octane’s focal depth set to zero). Everything else will override it, so it’s really best to just ignore this setting.
The Octane Camera Tag has a Focus Depth setting in the Thinlens tab that only appears when autofocus is turned OFF. If we alter this setting, the focal plane will get nearer to or further from the camera as we’d expect. At this point, C4D’s Focus Distance changes to match the Focus Depth setting, but that only goes one way - If we try to change the C4D Focus Distance, it’ll just snap back to Octane’s Focus Depth.
The Live Viewer has a Pick Focus mode. While the render is running (not paused), if we click the Focus Picker icon in the Live Viewer’s Controls bar and then click somewhere in the Live Viewer, Octane’s Focus Depth setting will be set ONCE to that area. That means if we click an object, it’ll become sharp, but if we move the camera closer or further, that object will go out of focus because this new focus distance moves with the camera. This is fine if our camera and object placement is set and we just want to do a quick focus check before a still render, but if we’re still moving stuff around or want to animate our scene, it becomes a problem.
…which leads us to setting a Focus Object, which is done in C4D Camera Object’s Main tab. If we drop one of our objects (or a null) into this field, the focus depth will lock to the P.Z coordinate of the focus object in relation to the camera. Focus will remain on this object regardless of where it or the camera moves so long as Auto focus is turned off.
Depth of Field (DoF)
This refers to how much of the scene is in focus vs. out of focus.
A LOT goes into getting good DoF results. The Photography Concepts for 3D Artists guide explores the various factors involved, and it’d be a good idea to review the DoF section there.
The Aperture setting in the Octane Camera Tag’s Thinlens tab, under the Depth of Field section is what controls how strong the depth of field effect is for any given setup. 0 (default) is “off”, meaning the whole scene is always in focus. Any other value will cause at least some of the scene to go out of focus. The higher the value, the stronger the effect.
The F-stop value in the Physical Camera Parameters section is linked to Aperture (one slider actually changes the other). The larger the F-stop number, the smaller the aperture becomes, and vice-versa. If we’re familiar with real world cameras, we can use the F-stop system to dial in specific values, otherwise we can just wing around the aperture slider until the scene looks like what we want, and call it good.
Important: The F-stop value in the C4D plugin is quirky. By default, the Aperture value is set to zero, which means infinite depth of field (everything in focus). The corresponding F-stop for a zero aperture should be “inf” (infinite), but for some reason it starts at 2.8, which is incorrect and confusing. If we move either the aperture or f-stop slider, the two will link back up again and work properly from that point forward for that camera. If we then set the f-stop back to 2.8, it will truly be 2.8 (aperture value of 0.8929 cm). To turn depth of field “off” again, we need to set the aperture to zero - nothing we do to the f-stop setting will ever turn off the depth of field effect.
The f-stop slider goes from 0.5 to 75.601521. This is a realistic enough range for a real world camera (although most don’t go higher than 22, and Octane Standalone goes to 64). We can type in larger or smaller values though, and if we edit the aperture directly, it can cause the f-stop number to go out of the range of the slider and still work.
Bokeh
Bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the out of focus area of an image. Octane defaults to “perfect” bokeh, but that’s not always realistic or desired. We’ll revisit this in Part II, but for now just know that it can be changed in a number of ways by using a variety of settings.
Shutter Speed
In a physical camera, the shutter opens for a particular amount of time to let in a particular amount of light. The side effect of slow shutter speed is motion blur. Since Octane doesn’t use shutter speed to control the brightness of the scene, the motion blur is really what we’re after with this setting, since a little bit can add to the realism of the scene.
Shutter speed is controlled in the Octane Camera Tag under the Motion Blur tab. The most important setting is the Enable checkbox, which needs to be turned on to allow motion blur at all. This is a per-camera setting, so if we drop a second camera into the scene, we need to remember to enable it for the new camera as well.
Important: Shutter speed controls the amount of blur for both camera AND object motion blur. An in-depth explanation of this is in the Photography Concepts for 3D Artists guide.
Shutter Time
For camera blur, the only setting that needs to change (other than enabling motion blur) is Shutter Time, which is typically called “shutter speed” coming from a camera background. As of newer versions of Octane, we have several methods of setting this, selectable by the Shutter Type button setting.
Time(sec.) is the original way to set it, and it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to a photographer because we think in fractions of a second, not metric time. Using this mode, if we want 1/2000 of a second, we’d have to type 0.0005 (one divided by 2000). This mode is still great for super slow shutter speeds though, because we can just type in 2, 3, 5, 20, etc. and get that many seconds.
Fortunately, Cinema 4D does math for us, so a workaround for this in the past was to just type 1/2000 in the field and it would calculate 0.0005, but it was pretty annoying and difficult to know what the setting was at when we came back later to look.
The Time (1/s) mode makes this a LOT easier for photographers. Now we can just switch to that, type “2000” and now our shutter is at 1/2000 of a second. No more math, yay!
As a bonus, we now have Angle and Frame Length modes as well, so if we’re coming from a film/video background and understand how these systems work, it’s easy to set up.
There are a few other settings here that are either self-explanatory or only needed in particular cases. The manual goes into what they do.
Octane Object Tag
If we want object motion blur on our objects, but our camera isn’t necessarily moving, we need to put an Octane Object Tag on them. Motion blur still needs to be enabled in the camera to get this to work, and the camera’s Shutter Time still determines the amount of blur.
Important: An Octane Object Tag must be put on EVERY object we want object motion blur on. We can nest a whole bunch of objects under a null and put the tag on the null, and it will carry through to all the nested objects, which is a nice shortcut.
The Enable motion data dropdown in the Object Tag’s Motion Blur tab lets us pick which type of motion blur we want. If our object is just moving around in space and rotating via its position and rotation values, then we’ll need the Transform type (default).
If vertices on our object are also deforming (like the octopus’ tentacles above), then we need to use Transform/Vertex. This will combine the blur from the vertices moving with the blur from the entire object transforming, plus whatever camera motion blur is in the scene if the camera is moving to produce a more realistic overall effect.
The Disabled option is for when we need the Object Tag for other reasons, want camera motion blur enabled, but don’t want object motion blur also.
We can remove camera motion blur from the equation and only see the effects of object motion blur by checking the “Disable Camera M.blur” checkbox in the Octane Camera Tag’s Motion Blur tab, but as of this writing, there’s no way to just isolate Vertex blur - this was achieved in the illustration above by simply not rotating the octopus.
The Vertex Speed mode is for animating volumetric data. The .vdb file needs to have a vertex speed channel for each axis included with it for this to hook up properly and work. Use GUIDs is only needed if we’re using motion blur on a particle system and it isn’t working well.
Shutter Speed Troubleshooting
A lot of things can go wrong with motion blur for a variety of reasons
The first step is always to check if we’re looking through the right camera. This is a very easy thing to overlook if we have multiple cameras in the scene or are using the editor camera to adjust things and forget to go back to the scene camera.
Next, we want to check our settings. Motion Blur needs to be enabled in the Octane Camera Tag’s Motion Blur tab, the shutter time should be set right, and Disable Camera m.blur needs to be OFF (meaning it’s enabled) unless we intentionally want it on.
If we’re using Object motion blur, every object we want blurred must have an Octane Object Tag on it. Enable motion data should be set to Transform, or Vertex/Transform if it has point-level animation in the Object Tag’s Motion blur tab.
If all that is correct, it’s probably a Live Viewer issue.
Octane needs to know the position of all the objects (and vertices) on the frames prior in order to calculate the blur. It’s constantly building a cache in the background as things change so it can reference back several frames. Because of this, if we grab the playhead in the timeline and start scrubbing around in the scene, the motion blur cache may break. This gets even worse if Octane is rendering at the time.
If the render isn’t matching the Live Viewer, we can use this “safe mode” way of checking the blur:
First, stop the render using the pause button. Then jump or scrub to a few frames before the frame we want to see. Then hit the R button to clear all data from the GPU. Then hit the Send Scene button (Octane logo icon) to resend all the data and rebuild the motion blur cache. Then hit the Go to Next Frame button a few times to get to the right frame while Octane is running.
Part II: Lens Properties & Effects
Distortion & Aberration
No lens element is perfect - all of them suffer from some type of geometric distortion or focusing wonkiness that camera and lens makers are always hard at work trying to correct. Many of these things can add flavor or visual interest to our renders, so Octane allows us to add back in pretty much every issue that keeps poor optics engineers up at night.
Distortion
The Distortion section of the Universal Camera settings allows us to warp the geometry of the render. Barrel (positive values), and Pincushion (negative values of Barrel) simulate these real world issues. Barrel Corners allows us to warp the corners separately to create what’s known as Mustache distortion by using negative numbers in corners if we use positive numbers in Barrel, and vice-versa.
Important: In Octane, this type of distortion does not affect focus - it’s similar to using a 2D image editor to warp the render after the fact.
Spherical distortion is similar to Barrel distortion, but does affect focus. We can see above that barrel distortion keeps all the white targets in focus. Spherical changes the focus, but in an annoying way because the focus point bulges out toward the camera. Using some not-so-simple math or just trial and error, we can move the focus point toward the camera to compensate.
Alternatively we can use the Fisheye type camera mode in the Universal Camera which doesn’t change the focus point (but also doesn’t work with all the other distortion/aberration settings).
Custom Distortion Texture
Octane cameras can have node networks that affect them just like textures or lights. What’s different about this than a texture or light is that we don’t actually see the connector between the Octane Camera Tag node and anything else we want to feed into it. Once we drop in a “last node” using the Attributes Manager, it’ll just kind of appear there next to the tag node. It won’t look it, but it will be connected.
Note: Distortion Texture does not impact focus - it’s more like Barrel distortion where it only affects the scene geometry. This works by distorting a 2D UV map, which is what all the red and green is about.
First we need to turn on Use distortion texture. This will make the render go gray. Then we need to assign a “last node” in the network to the camera. In this case, we’ll use an Add, which is under the flyout menu under c4doctane. Finally we need to hit the node icon to bring up the node editor.
Once the editor is up, we’ll see the Add texture we added. Now we can build out the network as we see above with the changes indicated. The intensity of the distortion is controlled in the Texture Projection node in the Transform area. To center the distortion properly, the Y value needs to be the same as the X value, only negative. Any grayscale texture (the example above uses a Noise4D) can drive the distortion of the red/green UV texture we set up, and that will translate to the distortion of the final render.
Once the initial setup is created, the fun part begins. We can feed in any texture (image/generated/etc) into the Texture Projection node and get all kinds of weird and crazy effects. There probably are even some practical applications (magnifying sphere callout or something). The file used to create the illustration above is located here.
Aberration
Aberration is a type of distortion that occurs when light rays that should converge at the same point in space after they pass through the lens, don’t. The result is focusing issues that are usually worse the further from the center of the frame we get. In-camera aberration is located in the Universal tab of the Camera tag under the Aberration section. Chromatic aberration is a post effect in Octane and is located in the Post tab. It’s applied after the fact, so it doesn’t take the lens properties into consideration like the others in this section do. We’ll look at CA in the Post Effects section next.
Important: In-camera aberration will do nothing if the whole scene is in focus (Aperture = 0). We’re trying to simulate focusing issues here, so if there’s no focusing happening, there’s nothing to do.
Also important: This section only works with the Thinlens mode of the Universal camera. It won’t do anything in Fisheye or the other projections, and these options do not appear in the Thinlens type camera. If Fisheye distortion and aberration is needed, we’ll need a Universal camera with a very wide focal length and Spherical distortion set to 1 to fishify it. Focus becomes difficult here, so it’ll take some trial and error to get the focus point where we want it. Using a separate null as a focus object is highly recommended.
Spherical aberration causes rays hitting the edge of a spherical lens to focus closer than the center. All of the lenses in the illustration above are 18mm set to f/0.5 to really call out these settings.
If the camera has spherical aberration, but no spherical distortion, there will be an even soft focus glow on all objects across the frame.
If the camera has spherical distortion, but no aberration, objects on the edges of the frame go out of focus more than the center as we saw earlier.
With both spherical aberration and distortion, objects on the edges of the frame will go out of focus more than the center and sort of split up and take on a double-exposure look on the edges that old/cheap lenses (and novelty lenses) have.
Important: Both of these settings affect the focus point (shifts it further toward or away from the camera), so a lot of manual focusing will be required to get the look we’re after. Using a null as a focus target is really the only way to go if we’re after this type of distortion.
Coma causes rays hitting the edge of any lens (spherical or not) to have a larger field of view. This creates kind of a “zoom-blur” effect. Coma also shifts the focus point (closer to the camera for positive, further away for negative), so manual focusing after this is applied will be important.
Astigmatism - causes rays that are perpendicular to each other to focus at different distances. This effect also worsens the further from the center of the lens we get. In a perfectly aspherical lens (no spherical distortion), this will look similar to both horizontal and vertical motion blur, and it won’t matter if the value is positive or negative. In a spherically distorted lens, the effect is quite different depending on whether it’s positive or negative. Astigmatism does not shift the focus point.
Field Curvature - affects the curvature of the focal plane. The result is similar to just the focusing effects of spherical distortion without altering the geometry. In fact, we can nearly counter the focus effects of spherical distortion by putting the inverse value into field curvature (-1 and 1 in the illustration above). We can also greatly enhance it by putting 1 in both fields to make super soft focus effects. This is nearly and not exact because it’s a slightly different calculation. Field curvature does not shift the focus point.
Bokeh (Revisited)
As mentioned before, bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the out of focus area. Part of this is determined by the quality of the glass, we just learned about in the distortion and aberration sections. The other part of the equation is the non-glass components, or the assembly itself. Octane gives us the ability to control the aperture shape, optical vignetting, and aperture shape so that we have a nearly endless amount of control over the bokeh.
Important: It may seem obvious, but since bokeh is describing the out-of-focus area, we need to make sure we have the aperture set to anything other than zero so that there’s some DoF going on. Also, while bokeh affects ALL out of focus areas, most of the time these are large areas that kind of blend together so we just either see a messy smear or a pleasant smear. If we really want to see what the settings are doing, we’ll want several tiny point lights in the scene at different distances (so they get more out of focus as they go back). These are often referred to as “bokeh balls” or “bokeh circles”.
Aperture Shape
The above example uses a 300mm camera set to f/1.2 located at -150cm in z. The object is a disc that’s 0.5cm in diameter and has an emissive material on it. It’s set back in space at the listed intervals from the focal plane (which is world zero). What we’re seeing here is that while the disc is sitting on the focal plane, it always appears as a perfectly round disc. As it goes back in space further out of this lens’ depth of field and more out of focus, it starts to take on the shape of the aperture.
The aperture’s shape is usually controlled by a diaphragm, which is made up of a series of blades that get further away from or closer to a central axis to make the aperture larger or smaller. If the blades are rounded, the aperture is more circular, and the out-of-focus bokeh circles appear more circular. If they’re flat, the bokeh circle appears more polygonal. Some diaphragms have notching. If we really push the notch position and scale and add just a bit of curvature, we nearly get an Octane logo :)
In the Camera Tag, under the Universal tab, in the Depth of Field section, the Aperture shape (set to Circular, Polygonal, or Notched), Blade count, Aperture roundness, Notch position and Notch scale settings all simulate a diaphragm. Optical vignetting (not to be confused with the Vignetting option in the Imager) simulates the “cat eye bokeh” caused by deep-set glass in the housing in some lenses.
We can also make custom aperture shapes if we set the Aperture shape to Custom and feed in an Image Texture node. High contrast black and white images with large white areas in the middle work best.
Distortion and Aberration also affects the bokeh the same way it affects the rest of the image (like we saw earlier), but it’s even more pronounced when looking at small light sources. We can combine all this together to try to mimic the character of older lenses, or just make something completely crazy.
Vignetting
Vignetting is the effect where the corners of the image darken and lose saturation. There are a few reasons for this, and they’re all lens design-related. Octane has two places where we can apply vignetting.
The Vignetting option in the Imager tab simulates mechanical vignetting, which is where the inside of the end of the barrel of the lens (or lens hood) is obstructing the frame. Similar to real lenses, the effect is more pronounced with wider focal lengths. Unlike real lenses, it doesn’t take into account the aperture, so we can’t control the softness of the edges of the vignetted area.
The Optical Vignetting section of the Universal tab is a technical simulation of optical vignetting which has to do with the placement of the lens elements within the barrel. This does take lens settings like aperture into consideration, and produces the hallmark “cat eye” bokeh of this type of vignetting.
Optical Vignetting has two settings: distance and scale.
Distance is how much the end of the barrel protrudes out from the aperture. This value is in meters for some reason, so small values like 0.02, (20mm) is more in the realm of a realistic value.
Scale is how large the barrel diameter is in relation to the aperture. This is a multiplier. If the aperture is at 14mm and the scale is 1, the barrel is also 14mm in diameter. If the scale is 2, the barrel is 28mm.
More distance creates darker corner shading and more cat eye. Scale requires distance >0. It reduces corner shading, and at some point starts distorting the cat eyes into D shapes.
Post Effects
The Post processing tab in the Octane Camera tag is where all of the lens and housing artifacts are simulated. This section has a lot of interdependencies, so it’s important to understand what affects what.
Important: The enable checkbox in the Post Processing tab MUST be checked for any of this to work. This includes Chromatic Aberration and Lens flare which, unlike bloom and glare, show up prior to hitting enable in the camera tag for some reason.
Bloom
Bloom is a focusing issue that creates a ‘light leaking’/glow effect around bright objects or reflections.
Specific settings: Made more or less intense with the bloom power value.
Requires: Areas of the scene with a lot of light on them (reflected, refracted, or emitted).
Affected by: Cutoff, spread start, spread end, spectral intensity, spectral shift.
Not affected by: Camera settings (any of them, really), chromatic aberration, glare.
Glare
Glare is an artifact of diffraction that causes sharp spikes or other directional light to appear to emit from bright light sources or around sharp edges.
Specific settings: Made more or less intense with Glare power. Glare ray count controls the number of spikes. Glare rotation angle rotates the effect. Glare blur makes it sharper or blurrier.
Requires: Areas of the scene with a lot of light on them (reflected, refracted, or emitted).
Affected by: Cutoff, spread start, spread end, spectral intensity, spectral shift, chromatic aberration
Not affected by: Camera settings, bloom (unless it’s washed out by it).
Lens Flare
Lens flare manifests as colorful artifacts opposite bright light sources.
Specific Settings: Lens flare intensity does what it says. Lens Flare Extent controls the location of the flares relative to the center of the frame. It also controls the look of the flare. Small numbers (<1) produce a certain type of look while larger ones (>1) produce a different look. Light color affects flare color.
Requires bloom (important - will not work without it), a strong light source or other bright object.
Affected by: Cutoff, bloom power, spread start, spread end, spectral intensity, spectral shift, chromatic aberration, camera settings (distortion/aberration).
Not affected by: Glare
Chromatic Aberration
Chromatic Aberration (CA) is a focus issue that occurs when different wavelengths fail to converge at the same point. This creates a distorted, colorful, smeary, multi-exposure look toward the edges of the frame.
Because this is a post effect and not an in-camera simulation like the distortion/aberration in the previous section, it’s not dependent on focus to work (so aperture can be zero). Similar to lens flare, and unlike bloom and glare, It does distort and blur when in-camera distortion/aberration simulations are applied.
Specific Settings: Chromatic aberration intensity makes the effect stronger or weaker.
Requires ‘Enable’ to be checked in the Post Processing tab (important - will not work without it), high contrast stuff near the edges of the frame will show the effect off the best.
Affected by: Camera settings, bloom/glare for intensity of colors.
Not affected by: Cutoff, spread start, spread end, spectral intensity, spectral shift, focus.
Wrap Up
This guide covered most of the things we can do with the Thin Lens and Universal (set to Thin Lens mode) camera types. Stay tuned for another guide that dives into alternate projections like fisheye and parallel (isometric in particular).
Author Notes