For those who don’t know the tool: Bao-Thinh Dinh creates procedural tools and assets for Blender. Patterned Glass Compositor sits in Blender’s Compositor, turning rendered CG or supplied imagery into patterned-glass effects without requiring the glass itself to become a geometry problem.
Bao-Thinh Dinh’s Patterned Glass Compositor is a free Blender node group for creating stylised glass distortion and refraction effects in compositing. It requires Blender 5.2 or later and works with renders from EEVEE and Cycles, as well as pre-rendered images and video.
The important bit is where it works. This is not a new glass shader or physically modeled refractive object. It processes an image after rendering, which makes the effect an art-directable finishing decision rather than something that necessarily has to be baked into scene geometry.
Fake glass, real pixels
The node group takes a black-and-white or grayscale texture through its Pattern input. That texture defines the distortion pattern, so artists are not limited to the examples supplied with the package. Bao-Thinh Dinh includes five starting patterns: vertical, horizontal, square, circular wave and dot. The effect can cover the complete frame or be restricted through the Mask input.
For motion graphics, abstract CG, privacy glass, partitions and foreground distortion, this is potentially the more convenient end of the pipeline. Render the clean image first, argue about the glass later.
The mask has a handle
The package also includes an interactive Circle Mask node. A 3D Empty controls the mask from Blender’s viewport: moving the Empty changes its position, while XY scaling changes its size. That is a small but useful interface choice. The processing remains in the Compositor, but the artist can position the affected area spatially instead of conducting another intimate conversation with numerical node parameters.
Post means post
Patterned Glass Compositor can also process pre-rendered images and video, which makes it useful beyond the current 3D scene: the glass treatment can be added after the source render or footage already exists.
Free is a price, not a licence
The Ko-fi listing prices the asset at $0 and describes it as completely free. Bao-Thinh Dinh does not request payment for the node group and instead suggests supporting the Blender Development Fund if the tool proves useful. For small finishing jobs, the attraction is straightforward: the distortion remains editable after rendering, custom patterns can replace the supplied examples, and masking keeps the effect where it belongs. Sometimes the cheapest glass in production is the pane that never existed.
| Product | Patterned Glass Compositor |
| Developer | Bao-Thinh Dinh |
| Host compatibility | Blender 5.2 and later |
| Render engines | EEVEE and Cycles |
| Inputs | Blender renders, pre-rendered images and video |
| Controls | Pattern input, Mask input, interactive Circle Mask |
| Included patterns | Vertical, horizontal, square, circular wave and dot |
| Pricing | Free ($0) |
| Download | Ko-fi |
