Vignette without Compositing

Hello, i am Tarik Bagriyanik from http://www.facebook.com/blenderWorks page.

Andrew Price says Vignetting is the darkening of the edges of a photo in his The WOW Factor book.
You can easily make a vignette effect in the compositing node editor. Generally we use Lens Distortion, math node, and Blur node then multiply with the original image. In this example, we will use a plane parented by the camera and play with the material and texture values. We will be able to change its color, size and shape. So there will be lots of values to modify as you wish! First we put a plane and give it a name like vignettePlane.

Ctrl P to make them parent

Wire is better not to close the camera view

Here plane is in front of the camera, size and place it Show the plane as wire and check Name in the object panel. I will not tell every step but the main ones. Lets add a material, give a name like vignetteMaterial, and a texture named vignetteTexture. These panels have the key values. If you want to disable the effect for once, you just check So it will be hidden. Wire.

Specular intensity is 0, Translucency is also 0 but we will use Transparency.

Transparency is on and Alpha value is 0. Dont forget to uncheck Traceable Or else you will get an irritating shadow

Anyway I changed these shadow values like here.

Now this is the best time, or fun time! Add the texture and make it Blend.

Show Alpha and but you dont have to click Both Click Ramp and slide the second color stop. If you want too much vignette, put the second one far to the right side. Brightness is also nice to scale the effect in or out.

In the Blend tab you can choose an effect type. Mostly we use Quadratic Sphere Cool name

Lastly we go to the Influence check Color, Alpha and Translucency to make them 1. Mapping size can be useful to reduce harsh borders while scaling the inner/outer of the texture. Some example renders:

Without vignette

With vignette

Quadratic, dont forget to F flip colorband