A Realistic Glow Effect

I really like using a lot of glows in my projects. The problem: Davinci Resolves default glows look all really fake. This is because they have a linear/ not realistic falloff. In the real world light falls off with the inverse square law. So I know you could, and this is what many people do, stack multiple glows on top of each other and manually create this realistic looking glow, but thats annoying.
It would be cool to have a glow that creates this falloff instantly by itself. Maybe you could take inspiration from deepglow, its an after effects script that can do exactly this and its really fast. Now there are some alternative plugins/scripts for davinci like xglow, fastexpoglow or other but they are all really slow and from what I know are also based on the "stacking glow" method, just made more customizable. Im sure the resolve/fusion team could develop a way more optimized version that instantly creates a realistic falloff.
Glow may not be used be a lot the editing/cutting community, but for compositing, motion graphics or creative music videos/edits you really need glow effects quite often. From what Ive experienced davinci is trying to compete with premiere/ Final Cut and the rest of purely "editing/cutting" software instead of after effects/ or nuke aka motion graphics and compositing software, but still I would really like to see this little effect added.

+1

There are several Glow effects available in 3rd-party plug-ins like BorisFX, Sapphire, and Scatter. A lot depends on what kind of real-world effect you're trying to imitate.

In the real world light falls off with the inverse square law.

How do you propose Resolve apply the inverse square law without any distance information in the frame?

How does it know how far apart pixels are in terms of real-world distance units?

1. Some people dont want to spend 500$ for an entire plugin suite, If its only about the glow. Also like I said, having a glow made by resolve and optimized by resolve would make it way faster. Why not? I dont see why having a native alternative would be a bad thing. Its not like If they work in this small effect, nothing of the other feature requests gets implemented. Also as far as I know, the inverse square law applies to nearly any real situation, that has something to do with light falloff.

2. First of all deepglow, opticalglow, xglow all these plugins prove that its possible to create auch a falloff. I suggest you watch "Having a glow" by PluginEverything on youtube, they explain how it works in part 2 or 3 I think. There is no "measurement" needed, all it says is that the brightness of the glow is exponentially fading away from the source. You can achieve this effect by overlaying blurs that are expanding exponentially.

First of all deepglow, opticalglow, xglow all these plugins prove that its possible to create auch a falloff.

Do they? Or does it just prove that they say that they're doing it?

There is no "measurement" needed

There literally is though. It's how inverse square law works.

I suggest you watch "How to make a glow" by PluginEverything on youtube, they explain how it works in part 2 or 3 I think.

Link please, or explain it yourself here if possible.

You can achieve this effect by overlaying blurs that are decreasing in size exponentially.

This does not sound realistic at all. Also, decreasing exponentially over what physical distance unit? It's rhetorical - the answer is none. It's a hack, and it needs to be a hack, because there is no supporting data for it to be "physically realistic".

I've watched the DeepGlow trailer clip, I can't see anything about its look that is different from the stock Glow in Ae (in 32-bit mode) or Resolve. In fact, the comparison shot they posted of their glow vs Ae glow is straight-up dishonest, because Ae was able to produce 32-bit glows several years before they posted that video.

If you can post a couple of comparison screengrabs of what Resolve is doing versus what you expect, maybe that can be more helpful as a feature request?

I must apologize, I should have done a bit more research. The scatter plugin is indeed pretty much what im asking for. So yeah sorry for being annoying and wasting your time. Wont happen again. Should I delete this post now? Or how does this work? Im relatively new on this forum.

First of all deepglow, opticalglow, xglow all these plugins prove that its possible to create auch a falloff.

Do they? Or does it just prove that they say that they're doing it?

There is no "measurement" needed

There literally is though. It's how inverse square law works.

I suggest you watch "How to make a glow" by PluginEverything on youtube, they explain how it works in part 2 or 3 I think.

Link please, or explain it yourself here if possible.

You can achieve this effect by overlaying blurs that are decreasing in size exponentially.

This does not sound realistic at all. Also, decreasing exponentially over what physical distance unit? It's rhetorical - the answer is none. It's a hack, and it needs to be a hack, because there is no supporting data for it to be "physically realistic".

I've watched the DeepGlow trailer clip, I can't see anything about its look that is different from the stock Glow in Ae (in 32-bit mode) or Resolve. In fact, the comparison shot they posted of their glow vs Ae glow is straight-up dishonest, because Ae was able to produce 32-bit glows several years before they posted that video.

If you can post a couple of comparison screengrabs of what Resolve is doing versus what you expect, maybe that can be more helpful as a feature request?

Yeah you are right it would be just aproximation of a physical glow. But the scatter plugin is pretty much what I had in mind.

It is always a hack as there is a lot of data about the scene missing. Same as turning knobbys for grade is a hack. But this doesn't stop us from changing the falloff model in screen space to get better looking result. Whether it is physically accurate is irrelevant.

I must apologize, I should have done a bit more research. The scatter plugin is indeed pretty much what im asking for. So yeah sorry for being annoying and wasting your time. Wont happen again. Should I delete this post now? Or how does this work? Im relatively new on this forum.

No, it's a question worth asking. Scatter is a very, very interesting plug-in. I'd be the first to say, "oh, you can do everything Scatter does just with Resolve," but quite a few of the modes made me say, "whoa... I didn't know that was possible." So it presents a lot of unusual effects.

In the real world light falls off with the inverse square law.

How do you propose Resolve apply the inverse square law without any distance information in the frame?

How does it know how far apart pixels are in terms of real-world distance units?

We're not talking about in-lens scattering, not mist or haze or any other volumetric effect here so you do not need any depth information. In-lens scattering simulation can be very convincingly approximated by using a derivative of pixel brightness and colour only. Scatter plugin is great example of that.

This never seemed to get "resolved"

To get realistic glow (as well as blurs)

Linearize image by using

- CST from log space to Linear gamma
- Apply glow effect
- make sure glow effect blending is set to Add
- CST out of Linear to you log space.

+1 for me...

+1

Just to throw in another plugin, that is quite new and probably affordable for many. DigiDiff by Kromatica. Not necessarily a glow plugin, but doing diffusion.

I made a review about it just recently if you want to know more.

There's another glow/diffusion plug-in that just showed up in the last few weeks: Grayscale Labs Nano.

The demo is very, very impressive, and it's not too expensive at a hundred bucks (lifetime with upgrades)..

More info at this link:

https://greyscalelabs.com/nano

I have zero connection with the developer except as an interested observer. The demo is free, so you can try before you buy.

nice I'll have a look

There's another glow/diffusion plug-in that just showed up in the last few weeks: Grayscale Labs Nano.

The demo is very, very impressive, and it's not too expensive at a hundred bucks (lifetime with upgrades)..

More info at this link:

https://greyscalelabs.com/nano

I have zero connection with the developer except as an interested observer. The demo is free, so you can try before you buy.

Saw that one. It is impressive until you look at edges. Almost every shot in this demo has problems at edges if you pause it. There's a reason the trailer is cut that fast.

I am really looking forward to this technology and improvements in the future but at this point in time it looks equally as good or bad as Resolve's depth map v1

There's another glow/diffusion plug-in that just showed up in the last few weeks: Grayscale Labs Nano.

The demo is very, very impressive, and it's not too expensive at a hundred bucks (lifetime with upgrades)..

More info at this link:

https://greyscalelabs.com/nano

I have zero connection with the developer except as an interested observer. The demo is free, so you can try before you buy.

Saw that one. It is impressive until you look at edges. Almost every shot in this demo has problems at edges if you pause it. There's a reason the trailer is cut that fast.

I am really looking forward to this technology and improvements in the future but at this point in time it looks equally as good or bad as Resolve's depth map v1

yes the edges are scketcy.....