Pool interior with caustics

[flipside]

Here's my try:



It wasn't difficult at all, I just did all normal steps for creating caustics:

-enable it in the caustics rollout (I changed max photons to 15 to get sharper caustics)
-enable generate caustics in the properties for the direct light (system rollout---light settings), subdivs set to 2500 for final rendering
-also turn on refractive GI caustics in the GI rollout to make sure that GI passes the water surface and illuminates the pool.

There is no glass in the windows. If you want that, just render without, save the irradiance map and caustic photon map and set it to reuse these maps. Then render with the windows visible.

regards,

flipside

[Junglejuz]

There is no glass in the windows. If you want that, just render without, save the irradiance map and caustic photon map and set it to reuse these maps. Then render with the windows visible.

That's a real hassle if I want to render an animation. Do the caustics not work properly with the glass in the scene?

[sc]

Flipside,

considering how much caustics you're getting on the bottom of the pool, I'm surprised the amount of cautic reflection on the ceiling is quote low.
How much tweaking will you need to do to your settings to get the ceiling caustics as strong as the bottom of the pool?

SunnyC.

[flipside]

Yeah I noticed that too... What you could do is set the caustics multiplier for the ceiling higher, but this also controls the send caustics of the celing. When your ceiling is reflective you can't use this workaround because the ceiling itsself would also produce new caustics.

This is why I asked a few times for seperate send/recieve caustics parameters, so you can set these parameters better. And also a difference between refractive and reflective caustics (we have this option for GI caustics, but not for normal caustics...). With this you would easily increase the reflective caustics parameter of the water to have more visible caustics on the ceiling/walls.

So again here's what I would like:
Normal direct caustics:
-refractive: per object or per material send multiplier and recieve multiplier
-reflective: per object or per material send multiplier and recieve multiplier

GI caustics:
-refractive: per object or per material send multiplier and recieve multiplier
-reflective: per object or per material send multiplier and recieve multiplier

But of course when you don't need these locals, default values are used. In this matter, I really liked finalrenders approach. Global options and per material locals that you could turn on or off and change their values.

Indeed this can be confusing for people who don't want it, but if you put these options in a seperate rollout (extended or something), they're not in the way of those who don't want them.

On the other hand, I think the caustics on the ceiling will never be as strong as the ones on the pools bottom in real life. I don't know why, but I just never saw such visible reflective caustics on a ceiling of a swimming pool.

Regards,

flipside

[sc]

I see what you mean. Some separate settings would be nice.

I do recall seeing some pretty serious reflected caustics from swimming pools though. You know the type, it's a romantic movie, with a couple sitting by the pool side with champagne. Reflected caustics is bouncing off everywhere, particularly onto their faces and bodies.

Real caustics like this would make a static camera animation awesome.
All you need is a good looking pair of guys and girls floating in the pool
and...voila!!! Animation done.

SunnyC

[hamilton3d]

wow kids! this is a great post for what i am looking for. I am getting ready to do an interior of a hotel, there is no pool now, but these emages are great for the scene i will be doing!

I have a whole lof of questions and am not sure where to start. i guess with the glass. I want to have light come through the glass, have reflection on the inside of the glass, and be able to still see very bright exterior light, almost like a glow like what you had in your pool scene. but the problem i run into is that the glass mat does not seem to let me see the outside light very well.

actually, now that i look at it, it does not seem to be letting me see outside at all! like it is not transparent.



then after i put a window in



not sure, let me know your thoughts! thanks guys and gals!

[PixelJockey]

Did you try turning off Cast Shadows for the glass object (Right Click > Properties > Cast Shadows)?

Also which was are your glass normals facing? They should be oriented to the inside.

[hamilton3d]

ok, so the glass thing i figured out. you can use reg materials with vray render enging. now i am not sure if you can do this without having a vraymap in slot or not. i was thinking if you just used a standard mat it would render black. have not tried that again in a scene. the important thing to me is, i was able to use a window object in max, assign a multi subobject to it and for interior glass, use the vraymap in the refl slot and turn the opacity down.

then also i made sure to use the vray shadow with a direct light.

now i am trying to figure out how to get that "glow" look in the windows....

this forum has helped a lot! even if there have been no direct responses yet, it still leads you to the right place if you follow the path!

[flipside]

For light to pass through windows, you have to use fog color and enable 'affect shadows'. Also turn refractive GI caustics on. If you enable caustics for the glass and direct light source, even more light will come through. Turning off cast shadows is an easier option however , but the skylight light will not pass through then, only the direct light, so you'll have to enable gi caustics anyway.

[Junglejuz]

now i am trying to figure out how to get that "glow" look in the windows....

I put a videopost glow in my windows. To do this you need to open Video Post, add a camera event, then add a Lens Effect Glow, then add an output event. Your max documentation will explain this a little further. In the properties of your glass object you need to set the G-buffer channel to any number ("1" for example), then in the lens effect glow settings you need to tell it to use object ID "1". Finally in your Vray render dialogue, under G-buffer color mapping you need to select everything in the G-Buffer output channels list. (You probably only need to have one selected but I am unsure which one). After you've done that you need to render your frame through the Video Post otherwise it won't do anything. Again, check your max documentation for more info re: Video Post