Correct caustics workflow

Hi all

I’m hoping someone could help point me in the direction of a correct caustics workflow.

Where I am getting confused is, is you want caustics do you have to sacrifice iradience map and lightcache as your indirect lighting engines and switch them to photons?

I’m hoping there is a workflow where I can get everything sorted and then add a couple of extra lights for caustics. Or would a separate renderlayer be better for this ?

Also if anyone had a few examples of setting up a basic sphere with some decent quality caustics. So far I have a sphere, a floor, a spot light. I change indirect illumination to photons and the material to a white refraction colour and I get caustics, however they are very low quality.

Anyway thanks for reading

Any help much appreciated

Will.

Try this. No GI caustics.