How do I orient fake lens flare particle with camera direction?

3dsnk
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 00:01:36 +0000
FX

Hey everyone,

Since post process lens flare isn’t supported on mobile right now, I’ve been asked to look into methods of faking lens flare and one way I hear is through Cascade particles. Keep in mind I’m not referring to anamorphic lens flare, but rather, the type of lens flare you get when looking up towards the sun, or to a highly bloomed light source which tend to have directionality.

I set up something real quick and simple, not accurate, just something I can see. What you see below is a static mesh made up of several translucent plane cards of varying scales.

I included all the empty black space to emphasize my problem. It’s pointing in the wrong direction. From here it should be pointing more towards the right. If I rotate my camera so the source of the flare is on the right, this is what I get:

Next I included a snapshot of my particle settings.

I believe the problem is associated with the Face Camera Direction Rather Than Position setting under the Camera Facing submenu. It enabled the flare to shift directions as I rotate the camera left and right. But clearly it’s inverted since this setting, as per its description: “…points the mesh against the camera view direction…”. I’m fairly certain if it was with the camera view direction it would behave as I want it to.

Does anyone have any workarounds to achieving that so the lens flare’s directionality is accurate whether the source of the flare is on the left or right?

OR, if there are alternative methods to achieving a fake lens flare effect of this type, could you please either point me to a source of information, or explain in detail what the alternatives are and how to go through the setup procedure?

2 posts - 2 participants