No specular when using caustics

[Uniel]

Hi,

I'm trying to render some stuff inside of a glass bottle with some water in it. I also want the render to show caustics. I'm using a physical sky and sun. I'm successfully getting caustics when turning Affect Shadows Off on the glass and water materials. I think this is the proper setup(?) (image 2).
Problem is, I'm losing the specular on the objects inside of the bottle. I've made a simple scene to demonstrate this I've verified IRL that you in facts will see the reflection of the sun if an object is inside of a bottle (maybe it would be different if the object was actually inside of the glass medium). If I enable Affect Shadows I'll get the specular back, but lose the caustics (image 3). I would like both specular and caustics. Is this possible? Please have a look at the picture.

Thank you.

[intercard]

Hello !!

Humm I think it is a correct behavior .. maybe the bottle deflects the light rays modifying the specular ones inside. have you tried activating in the bottle material affect channels> all channels from Refraction - advanced?

ahh check the wrong shadow in your image 3,

this is only my opinion, I am not a Chaos support technician!!

regard and hugs !!

[Uniel]

Hi Carlos intercard ,

Thanks for your reply. Yes the shadows are wrong in image 3. In my mind the result should be like in image 2 but with the specular from image 1 and 3. Maybe this result is the correct behavior, but then it's not mimicing the real world. I actually spent a good portion of yesterday putting real objects in a real glass bottle to check real world behavior. In the real world you don't lose highlights from light sources just by putting the shiny object in a transparent bottle (that's a fact, not an opinion btw).
I tried changing the advanced setting to All Channels. It didn't solve the issue. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Uniel]

This image pretty much illustrates what I'm looking for. I made a comp in Photoshop, where I put the specular back on the object inside the bottle.

[hermit.crab]

Is the bottle single-sided? If yes, does it help if you turn on the "Thin-walled" option?

[Uniel]

Is the bottle single-sided? If yes, does it help if you turn on the "Thin-walled" option?

The bottle is built like a real bottle, with thickness, not single-sided, so no.

[hermit.crab]

In that case, send the scene so we can take a look.