Rendering an underwater scene

[djanim8]

I'm rendering an underwater scene and was having an issue where it appeared the camera's FOV was being rendered differently. I posted about this (thinking it was VRay) here. I've learned that it's the IOR of the material I'm using on the water. If I put the camera INSIDE the Phoenix simulation grid, it will render fine, but this grid is pretty small, so I need the camera to be outside of it. When I put the camera outside the simulation grid, it takes the material's IOR into play and affects the render. Is there a "proper" way to do an underwater scene when using Phoenix?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

Are you rendering just a mesh or you render in ocean mode? If it's the latter, you could try turning 'Underwater goggles' off. Would be better if you could attach a screenshot of how it looks.

Cheers!

[djanim8]

There are screen shots in the original post that I linked in the first message: http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...618#post704618

I'm unsure of what the "underwater googles" is... where is that? I haven't found a good tutorial about making an underwater scene in VRay/Phoenix yet... is there one around?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, sorry about that - just checked the screenshots - it looks definitely like this is the reason.

Check the Rendering panel - it may be called 'underwater glasses' if you are using an older build.

[djanim8]

I'm on the latest version, using max 2016, don't see any underwater googles option. And it is in Ocean mode. Must have been something they had previously?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Looks like you are using the official 2.2 version - you should better get a nightly build - drop a mail to Support and ask for permissions for the 2.2 nightly builds. In the official 2.2 you would not be able to turn this option off - it would constantly be enabled and is not present in the interface yet...

[djanim8]

Yes we're using 2.2. Are the nightly builds stable? We have fairly tight deadlines so I don't want something to get broken with a nightly build, so I've been hesitant to ask for them, or try them out.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Negative - that's the catch with nightlies. They do have a ton of fixes over 2.2, however, and a new liquid solver as well. The nightlies from Aug 3th (the last ones for 2.2) have passes all our internal test scenes, so they should be generally ok.

If you are going to use them only for rendering though, you should definitely go for them, but in this case you can just use a VRayVolumeGrid - it's a snapshot of how the Phoenix nightlies were when V-Ray was released, so it should be okay as well.

[djanim8]

I sent an email and will give it a shot. Hopefully if there are issues, we can revert back to the 2.2?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

You should watch out to not overwrite the old scenes with the new version, or the old one may or may not be able to work with them properly, depending on what settings there are in the scene.