Thank you! Yes, they are quite easy to set up actually!
TL;DR: Use this simple node set up to create some sparkles:
More in-depth and (hopefully) beginner friendly version under the cut:
Here is my sample scene (in Blender 2.8):
I’m using an ocean modifier to generate the water surface and Eevee for rendering. The shader setup for the water uses a mix between a glossy shader and a refraction shader alongside a ShadertoRGB node to get that cel-shading look. (Side Note: the ShadertoRGB node is an absolute lifesaver for when you just want some cartoony goodness for your 3D renders!)
Here’s the deal: I like to seperate what parts of the image will end up receiving sparkles while setting up shaders. It depends on what kind of scene you’re working with of course but for this one I’m using an additional emission node to individually determine color and glow strength of the shiny bits.
The strength of the emission will later be influencing the scale of the sparkles. I’m also using a procedural Musgrave texture to mask out the emission shader. Here is what it looks like with just the mask part of the node tree enabled:
Works pretty much like a Photoshop mask. The white parts display the emission node, the black ones everything else regarding the water shader.
Anyway, now for why you are here.
I’m gonna hit F12 to render that boy.
Where are the sparkles?? Well, for that we gotta switch from the Layout tab to Compositing:
Be sure to check the little box next to “Use Nodes” so the Render Layers and Composite Nodes will show up! Now the fun part: Hit SHIFT + A to bring up the Node Selection Menu. Then go to “Filter” > “Glare”.
A new funky friend has appeared and you better drag him right between the Render Layers and Composite Nodes.
Now it’s really mostly up to you play around with the settings and figure out what works best for your project. Here’s what I went with:
And that’s pretty much all there is to it! Now go, ✨ ✨ sparkle ✨ ✨ to your heart’s content.
BTW,THIS ALSO WORKS WITH YOUR DIGITAL DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS. You can load them into Blender using an image node!
