How to Create Light Glare in Architectural Renders with Blender’s Glare Node

What will you learn in this guide?

In architectural visualization, a sun entering the frame, a bright light fixture, or a reflection on a glass surface can become the focal point of an image. The Glare node in Blender’s Compositor adds a soft glow, lens-like streaks, or light beams to selected bright areas. Rather than spreading these effects indiscriminately across the whole image, you need to control which areas are affected and how strong the effect is.

In this practical guide, you’ll choose a Glare type for a render, adjust the brightness threshold and quality settings, and save the result. It also covers how keeping lights or scene elements on separate View Layers can make later adjustments more controlled. Blender’s manuals explain the node’s functions and the compositing workflow, but don’t provide ready-made values for a specific architectural scene. Settings should therefore be tested against the image you’re working with.

Requirements

• You’ll need a scene prepared in Blender using the Compositor, or an image to work with. The source documents don’t specify a Blender version number or account requirements.

• You can bring a rendered image into the Compositor or use the scene’s render layers. The Compositor can process individual images or frames from an image sequence.

• For the scene to use the compositing node tree, the Compositing Pipeline option must be enabled under Post Processing in the Output section.

• Use the Render and Save Image options to save the result as a single image. The manual also mentions the Animation option for saving animations or image sequences.

Create a Glare effect step by step

1. Set up the Compositor node tree

Open the Compositor and create a new node tree using the New button in the header. This tree can be linked to a scene, reused in different scenes, or brought in from other Blender files. Check that the Compositing Pipeline option is enabled so the result is applied during rendering. If this option isn’t enabled, the node tree may not be used in the output process.

Bring the image into the node tree, process it, and combine it with other images if needed. If you’re working with an existing scene render, you can also use layer data through the scene’s Render Layers node. According to the manuals, each View Layer can be accessed in the Compositor through a Render Layers node.

2. Add the Glare node to the image flow

Connect the image input to the Glare node, then connect the node’s Image output to the compositing flow for the final image. As well as the processed image, the Glare node provides separate outputs for the generated glare and the selected bright areas used to create the effect. These outputs are useful for evaluating the glow separately from the original image or using it in other adjustments.

For your first pass, observe how much of the image is occupied by bright sources rather than applying a strong effect to the entire scene. Check different areas of the image to make sure the glow doesn’t obscure material and lighting details in the architectural visualization.

3. Choose a Glare type for the scene

The Glare Type setting changes the look of the effect:

• Bloom adds a soft spread of light around bright areas.

• Fog Glow aims to produce a softer, more physically realistic glow; the Blender manual notes that it takes more processing time than Bloom.

• Streaks creates lines of light around bright points. The Streaks setting controls the number of lines, while Streaks Angle sets the angle of the first line relative to the horizontal axis.

• Ghosts creates overlapping, lens-flare-like artifacts.

• Sun Beams simulates light beams radiating from a position in the image.

• Simple Star creates a simpler, star-shaped effect similar to Streaks.

For a soft glow in an interior render, try Bloom or Fog Glow. Sun Beams may suit an image of sunlight streaming through a window, while Streaks can work for a directly visible bright source. These aren’t fixed recipes, but starting points based on the documented functions of the effect types.

4. Adjust the brightness threshold and effect strength

Threshold sets the minimum brightness required for glare to appear. Lowering the threshold brings more areas into the effect, while raising it confines the effect to the brightest regions. If much of the image is glowing, try increasing the threshold so that only the most prominent light sources are selected.

Smoothness controls how gradually pixels transition into the glare effect. Strength adjusts the overall intensity: a higher value makes the glow stronger, while a lower value blends the effect more with the original image. Saturation and Tint adjust the glow’s color saturation and hue. Clamp and Maximum help limit high brightness values. In images with large luminance differences, these controls can help produce a more consistent Bloom look.

5. Adjust quality and spread while previewing

The Quality option determines the resolution at which the Glare effect is processed. High works at full resolution; Medium uses a lower resolution to reduce processing time; Low processes faster but provides less detail. A useful approach is to work at low or medium quality for previews and increase the quality for the final evaluation.

For Bloom, Fog Glow, and Sun Beams, Size determines the effect’s relative spread across the image. A smaller value narrows the spread. For Sun Beams, Sun Position defines the beams’ starting point relative to the image dimensions. With the node selected and Active Node Gizmo enabled, a marker appears in the image preview for adjusting the Sun Beams position.

6. Separate the light source with layers and save the output

Sun Beams generates light beams from suitable areas in the image. The Blender manual recommends first identifying the areas from which the beams should emerge; if needed, adjust brightness and contrast or use masking. The resulting beams can be added over the original image.

For more control, you can keep light sources or scene elements on separate View Layers. View Layers allow collection visibility to vary and let you render layers independently through the Render Layers node. Render the scene, review the result, and use Save Image to save a single image. For an image sequence or animation, use the relevant Animation settings.

Common mistakes

Setting the threshold too low: In this case, a wide range of areas can contribute to the effect if they exceed the brightness threshold. Try raising Threshold first, then check that only the intended light sources are affected.

Making the effect too strong: Strength controls the overall intensity of the glow. If image details become hard to see, reduce it; evaluate Tint and Saturation in relation to the image’s colors as well.

Working at high quality during previews: According to the manual, lower-quality options can reduce processing time. Use Low or Medium while testing, then review the quality setting before evaluating the final image.

Generating light beams before preparing the Sun Beams source: If it’s unclear which areas the beams should emerge from, the result can look uncontrolled. Adjust the source image to emphasize bright areas or consider using a masking approach.

Forgetting to enable compositing: Even if the node tree is set up, you may not get the expected output if Compositing Pipeline is disabled under Post Processing. Check this option before rendering.

Next steps

Start by comparing different Glare types on the same image. Then change one setting at a time to see how Threshold, Strength, and Size affect the result. This makes it easier to understand how each control changes the image. Next, use View Layers to separate light sources or the background, then apply different compositing operations to each layer. The Compositor can output a single image, an image sequence, or a film frame. For animation, use the Animation workflow described in the source documents, and choose an image format that supports alpha or Z-depth channels if needed.

Sources and license

This guide is adapted into Turkish from the Blender Manual’s Glare Node, Compositing Introduction, and View Layers documentation. All three sources are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.