Caustics issue - cannot find workable settings...

[simmsimaging]

Here's a screen grab of the RGB and caustic elements.

You can see the caustics missing in the element that are super bright in (parts) of the RGB (visible through the glass objects). You can also see how different the caustics are when the geo is penetrating something (1/2 sphere on the right) and floating in the air (sphere on left). I am not sure why they are so different?



scene file:
http://www.simmsimaging.com/upload/f...c_test.max.zip (67.36 KB)

[Deflaminis]

I love Vray, I really do. But caustics and SSS are very tricky to get right in it. Even following tutorials and trying many different processes it just never goes quite the way I want. The only renderer I've had luck with caustics in is Maxwell, which isn't really going to cut it for animations and whatnot. Sometimes I wish Vray had a diagnostic tool for SSS like Mentay ray has, as I find even with SSS2 that SSS is really hard to get working correctly. Not trying to bash vray (I love it, I really do) but those are the two hardest things to work with from my experience. When Vray 3 comes out I hope that there is a wizard/tooltip/diagnostic utility for those two things. That being said, vray rocks.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

I give up on caustincs in Vray - theyre disaster, when it comes to caustics I just convert my Vray scenes to mental ray scenes, and do quick caustic pass. Works best for me so far...

[simmsimaging]

Resolution seems to be a very significant factor in my experience. They are extremely hard to get predictable and good results in hi-res (print res etc.). I also like Maxwell for anything with complex caustics required, but it's not perfect there either. Caustics are just hard I guess

[Mokiki]

Had my share of troubles with caustics too and I usually try to avoid them if I can. But if I have to do caustics I tend to use the method someone mentioned on the first page with a max spotlight which is just used for caustics and doesn't illuminate the scene at all.

[simmsimaging]

That methodology works okay at lower resolutions but there are issues at high res (grainy/lumpy looking caustics unless you start messing with settings again). It also does not resolve the caustics through glass-like materials not showing in the render element, and looking very different depending on what they are touching etc.