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I'm not sure what info you're looking for. The shape in the aperture map will control the shape of the dispersion effect. If it's a 6 sided pattern, you get 6 streaks from your light sources. Then it depends on how strong your light sources are in the scene. If the camera sees a strong emitter or the sun, then it's going to have a stronger dispersion effect than if the cameras sees a reflection of an emitter. So you can't expect to have exactly the same results with every scene/camera view. The effect will also look different depending on how small the white area of the aperture map is compared to the black area. There are plenty of maps available with the install to get you started.

thanks Mihai,
is the shape of appature importand for macro
Philip

hahaha

thanx but this I know. What I can't understand is how the numbers change the output. sometimes I punch in stuff like 10,10,10 in the input fields and get huge flares, sometimes typing 500 will be less effective, all the same emitters (usually I do interiors...). there's no way of telling what's gonna happen...

When you say same emitters, do you mean same size/strength? This matters but also how they are seen by the camera, just like a real lens would react. In some angles you will see more glare, in others less. What is predictable is the shape of the glare based on the aperture map you use.

I just take the spots I use and move them from project to project. My problem is not the shape but how to control the size of the effect without spending time guessing. I can't understand the numeric input factors and what they do.

Just think of flares through moving leaves produced by the sun, if you make it a video and watch it frame by frame, you'll see how much it is subtile and unforeseeable!

There are many situations where flares occur, as Mihai said it depends of lights theirselves, camera angle, and in Maxwell the light setup you use.

The manual says that the obstacle and aperture map should ideally be close to the resolution of the render to minimise distortion. I can understand this for the obstacle map but I would imagine that the aperture map should stay square. eg: If you were rendering 5000x2000px would you ideally have a 5000x2000px aperture map too, or just keep it around 2000x2000px?

It's better the aperture maps are square.