caustics - mixing indoors and out - how to?

[sv]

anyone got any idea on what's the best way to do this?

an internal pool room, surrounded by windows.
I want physical caustics being cast in the pool water, but don't want to have to calculate caustics being cast onto every surface and through every window...

you can get acceptable results for windows from the "affect shadows" option for glass, but when i turn on caustic's doesn't this over ride the "affect shadows" option?

can you have a mix of both fake and real?

[ene.xis]

cant u hide the glass objects, calculate ur caustics solution from the light hitting the pool water, and then turn on ur glass objects previously hidden and render ur image.

[DaForce]

yep you can calc your caustics solution with all the glass..etc.. turned off as ene.xis said.

You could also do what I do and use a specific direct light just for casting caustics that way you can set the focus of the light just around the pool.

[teabag]

second what daforce said works like charm

[MoonDoggie]

yep you can calc your caustics solution with all the glass..etc.. turned off as ene.xis said.

You could also do what I do and use a specific direct light just for casting caustics that way you can set the focus of the light just around the pool.

Do you turn off caustic calculation for every other light? IE the sun? also is the light you're using to generate your caustics a max direct light?

Thanks, just curious.

[DaForce]

yep, so only the direct light is casting caustics.

I also untick diffuse and specular in the advanced effects rollout for the direct light as well so it doesnt actually light the scene up.

You can use say the vraysun as well and its pretty effective just make sure you limit the photon emit radius to be just around what yo uwant to have caustics