Rendering an LED Projector

[brendon_markham]

Hi Everyone,

I'm just wondering if anyone can assist with rendering a product my company offers.

This is the product & effect I'm trying to replicate within V-Ray currently. I have modelled the product, with the pattern on the clear dome on top, it has thickness of about 1mm, I have applied a glass material, I have placed a Spot Light inside and enabled caustics in render settings, however I'm not getting the desired effect.

Any help on how to render this effect would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[fixeighted]

What result did you achieve?

It's definitely 'possible' but I think you'll struggle without very precisely replicated geometry, meaning a lot of tweaking to get those thin lines, plus awfully long render times, based on the attached test.
Of course someone else may have a simpler take on it. One method would be to fake it with a map, if that works for the intended situation.

[fixeighted]

Ok, so if you're still trying to get this to work I rediscovered a great technique which renders quickly and will be good for your purposes.
Take a look at this for more info on the very simple setup https://youtu.be/F2c8cSArXnM

This image is quick test using just a standard omni light. You only need the caustic element pass, which you can then denoise and overlay as you like, for more control.

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi brendon_markham,

As fixeighted has shown this lighting effect can be achieved in V-Ray with Caustics.
However, the geometry of the glass dome will have to be extremely precise down to the imperfections in order for the refracted pattern to be close to the real one.
Also, achieving high quality projection would require a big number of caustic photons to be emitted from the light source and the rendering will be slow.
On top of that I can see that the light from the differently colored LEDs is refracted in a distinct way thanks to the LEDs positioning and orientation inside the dome. This is another thing not easy to replicate.

Konstantin