light bleed through window

Question

I'd like to get my light to bleed through the window and create a soft edge effect around the window frames. Here is an example image I found that shows my desired effects. The light seems to pour in and wrap around the window frame.

Here is my render (this is not a final version, only 100 samples to show my example).

As you can see, my window frame has very hard edges to it. I've tried turning up the outside lights, painting the window white (as opposed to dark wood), added portal lights, tinkered with the exposure, etc. I even tried volumetric scattering in the environment but this creates too much 'haze' in the entire scene. I really only want that effect around the window.

Here is a link to my blender file. I'm still very new to Blender so any helpful advice would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Use a glare node in the compositor. The glare node works using a "threshold", that will allow you to have the effect on pixels brighter than a certain value.

Read:

Any way to control light halos in the compositor based on emission level?

Answer 2

First of all your window frame might be too dark to achieve what you want. Secondly You might want to try to make the outside light not only brighter but also bigger, or even use the sky as a light, the effect I think you want is happening because the light is coming from all directions, and so the frame is illuminated on the inside. The frame in the first picture is also very bright itself and so it reflects a lot of light, making objects inside the room lit up from a wider angle as well. I hope this helps. So far your scene looks really good and I would love to see it when you get it working the way you want to ;)