Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Who uses aperture maps and how do you use them?

When I shot a lot of film, I would sometimes use a filter to give a bit of bloom and star streaks to a light. Can we use an aperture map to do that?

Anyway, would love to see some examples of how you guys are using them!

You could do that but you'd have to make a very narrow star shaped map, with the amount of streaks you'd like to see around the highlights. But the diffraction simulens thing though is very old and I don't think any work has been done to it since it was added many years ago. If you push it too hard it blurs the entire scene.

Here's an example of the a more stylized glare/streak effect, using a custom narrow 4-point star shape aperture map.

Thank you!

I made this map today, hope it helps, you will need an instense lightsource ofcourse.
diffraction was 258 Frequency 1593 bokeh ratio 2, angle 0, Glare is a post effect so camera settings dont really matter other than artistic preference, it is fiddly esp the frequency setting but it does work.
Just the car is 3d, lit by the high-res hdri background, the carlights are 2cm low-poly spheres, the bowl is simple bsdf nd500 roughness 4, glass-rough 0 has a normal map applied to the inside surface by way of cubic mapping non-tiling with a offset... Maxwell workflow lol.

p.s. car grille needs better geo.

OMG, I'm just seeing this now. This is fantastic! I need really figure out how to use it, but seriously, thank you! I'd love to see more examples of how you use them.

Glad you saw it.

Old addition to Maxwell but still looks nice in many cases I only wish we had more control for the Glare and the Scattering of where to apply it - a balance slider to make it affect more or less *only* the bright parts of a render, even if you really push it.