Blender Compositing Tutorial

 Today I want to explore the compositor in Blender. As you may know, the compositor is for post-processing.

I will start with a basic render, just an obelisk nothing fancy.

Then in Blender we will switch over to the Compositing tab (Top of screen). Then check the Use Nodes check box.

We are given two nodes to start with. The Render Layers node, which is our starting image, and the Composite node which will be the result of our filtering.

If you want to see a larger preview of the image press shift + A, select Output, and then Viewer. Then connect the Render Layers Image Out to the Viewer Image In. You may have to resize your preview image by clicking on one of the corners of your preview image and dragging the mouse.

Now lets see what kind of filters we have and what they do.

I will skip over Anti-Aliasing. That one does not apply to this tutorial. But then we have a lot of different blur filters. It makes me wonder why we might want to blur our render and why so many different options?

Well, in life there are different types of blur. For example, there is motion blur, or field of view focus blur, where the object in front is in focus but the scene behind is blurred. There is subtle blurs that can help hide noise. But none of these examples are useful for my particular render. Still just for fun, here is a blur filter applied to the image.

How about a Glare filter. 

Now this one is cool. It makes the sun glow over the obelisk.

The Sun Beams filter is fun. You can move the point of emission around to make it look like different parts of your render are glowing. I added sun beams to the sun in my render. (Very original...)

And of course you start to get some really bizarre results when you begin mixing different filters together.

But you know what... I kind of like it.

So, as you can see the Compositor in Blender can be a powerful tool for creating post-processing effects like glows, lens flares, sun beams, and blurs that enhance the realism or artistic style of your renders.

Thanks for indulging me as I played around with Blender's Compositor today.