What is bloom? (And how is it simulated?)

Опубликовано: 16 Февраль 2026
на канале: AngeTheGreat
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Most people know that lights tend to bloom out when they become very bright, but why is this the case and why with this pattern? In this video I explain why it happens and how it can be simulated in a physically realistic way.

This is a C++ Fraunhofer diffraction simulation that uses the infrastructure in my open-source path-tracer. This technique is often used to generate a diffraction pattern which can then be used as a convolution filter which effectively simulates bloom from arbitrary bright shapes.

All of the code is open source and can be found on my GitHub.

Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:05 What does not cause bloom
2:20 What does cause bloom
4:30 How this relates to the Fourier transform
5:33 2D Fourier Transform Examples
8:00 Applying the Fourier transform to aperture geometries
9:30 Satisfying simulation
10:47 Human eye simulation
11:22 Smudged phone camera simulation
12:22 Outro

#physics #diffraction #programming

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