Caustics "flythru" mode

[DaForce]

Was wondering if its possible to add an option to save a caustics solution over a series of frames, which can then be loaded and used. Basically an animated caustics solution.

For instance if you had a indoor pool and the water was animated, and you saved our the caustics solution (would need to be calced frame by frame the first time obviously) you could then reload the caustics animation so that you could make changes to the rooms textures or the tile color or something in the pool and not have to recalc the caustics solution for the whole animation again.

I have mentioned this to Candelero and he suggested for the time being that maybe one of your script nerds (no offence ) could make up a script to save the caustics solution each frame maybe to a seperate file and then reload the appropriate file for the appropriate frame at render time... Lele up for a challenge

And perhaps later on maybe Vlado could code it in to vray


Anyway I hope that made sense.. if not let me know so i can clarify.

[Dynedain]

Thats a pretty good idea. And if it saved per-frame, then changes in the caustics because of animated surfaces could be compensated for....

If I had more time to waste with MaxScript I could probably figure something out, but I don't, sorry.

[DaForce]

Exactly... abit like the IR map now

lol yeah.. im not even going to attempt it.. my knowledge of maxscript is zero.

[jacksc02]

good idea, but depending on how accurate it has to be you could just use a caustic generator programme and then use a projector light with the caustics map, it works really well and is nice and fast. It all depends on accuracy

[DaForce]

yeah there are definitly work arounds. But this was mainly aimed at using true caustics.

I guess you would still need to render out a image for each frame using that caustics generator program anyway hey.

[jacksc02]

well you can just render out a sequence of images and use the sequence, but the generator takes about .01 of a second to make each image its dam quick

[studioDIM]

hey guys, sorry i totally missed this one...
I'll look into it as i leave the galley that's hosting me at the moment

I should be doable, in theory, but it's a long while i haven't touched vray caustics :P

I'll have to understand how they work first (i thought they worked for animation, but maybe not as efficiently as i thought they would, yet)

But i will try it.
and of course keep you chaps posted.

Lele

[DaForce]

Thanks heaps Lele

Sure they are animatable.. as long as you calc each frame. The saving option only saves one calcs worth.

[studioDIM]

ah, ok i see it now.
You'd need a callback that after each rendered frame would change the loaded caustic map.
Would it be good if you just provided a base name when rendering the casutics maps, and the script appended numbers to match frame numbers to the filename?

Or would you prefer another way of doing it?

Lele

[DaForce]

That sounds good enough i reckon.

I cant think of any other way it could be done with relative ease.

[toby™]

ah, ok i see it now.
You'd need a callback that after each rendered frame would change the loaded caustic map.
Would it be good if you just provided a base name when rendering the casutics maps, and the script appended numbers to match frame numbers to the filename?

Or would you prefer another way of doing it?

Lele

Hum. .. Looking for storing the data in one file, seperating its content in an array, should do the trick, wouldn't it?

e.g.:
caustics-map

$array[currframeno] = [currframeno, photonsolution]

output:
0 = [0, photonsolution]
1 = [1, photonsolution]
2 = [2, photonsolution]
...
n = [n, photonsolution]

...incremented depending on the framecount of the current animation sequence

Do these thoughts make sense?

[RErender]

Would be very easy to convert my Imapcontrol script to save caustic maps instead, but I wonder it it would ever get used.

How many people have a use for this? Wouldn't save any time unless you had to re-render.

[DaForce]

I think it woud be handy. Say you had to change textures..etc.. on a different part of the scene and had to rerender.. would save a fair amount of time.

So if it wouldnt take a huge amount of time for you to convert your script i would certainly appreciate it