OpenLensFlare: an open-source, lens flare designing and rendering framework

Abstract

Lens flare rendering in computer games has always been lacking. While physically motivated solutions based on real camera systems exist, their inherent complexity makes them inappropriate for widespread use. Developers are not trained to work with these complicated imaging systems, and even if they were, artists and designers prefer intuitive parameters over these complicated optical system descriptions. More support is needed to start adopting to these advanced models, and to show that with an appropriate tool the situation can be vastly improved. This paper describes OpenLensFlare, an open-source C++ framework for rendering convincing physically-based lens flare effects. Additionally, a supporting optical system editor is also provided, which is capable of producing and visualizing optical systems and showing an example usage of the run-time library. Together, these two systems can be used to replace the existing naive algorithms, with small effort and low integration complexity.