hi,
I made cautics on pool water by using daforce method.
thank you for this easy fast caustic tip 
I used physical sun for this project.
when I was making the caustics light, I had to increase multiplier.
below you can see renders with no caustics and with caustics.
renders are wip quality, ir.map at very low preset and AA at fixed=2
NO CAUSTICS
CAUSTICS FIRST TRY- LOW LIGHT INTENSITY
CAUSTIC TRIALS ADJUSTING INTENSITY
Nice studies! 
Could you post the link to DaForces original post?
hehehe woohoo
Thanks giraffe, looks good
If your using the vraysun to cast the caustics and not a direct light like I do you need to change the photon emiit radius of the sun to just cover the water area.. so you dont waste caustics subdivs in other areas of the scene.
Only other issue with using the vraysun as it seems to not make the caustics as sharp as a direct light. (from memory)
Thats one with a little scene I uploaded.
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15248&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
And if you do a search for caustics with me as the author you will find lots of other helpfull info ( I think :lol: )
hoho looks good
now i know where to go for caustics help!!
Get in the queue
haha nice signature SonOfNimrod
haha…thx DaForce…love all these little workarounds ppl come up with…
yeah, i love a good workaround
daforce:
I use the vsun for illuminate scene.
but caustics is by a direct light.
but using vsun is interesting too I will try that too!
thanks again for this nice tip
My little contribution for the caustics:
Dayligh (Vray sun) is used both for the caustics & for illumination of the scene.
Now see that looks awesome
I guess vraysun does work well once you have the photon emit radius setup
visumporec,
this is a bit offtopic, but how did you map that pool edge? How did you get the seam to be diagonal on the corner?
For correct adjustement of pool caustics you must switch to the vray sun viewport, select this light and then adjust photon emit radius…
@pailhead: Nothing special… It is loft pool edge with ceramic texture, after that i have regulate wide of pool to get diagonal on the corner
I think it looks great too
did u use another sun with only caustics enabled?
I want my caustics to be more vivid too. but I cannot achieve.
I dont know which parameter to tweak- I think I tweaked all.
my caustics source is one direct light.
More subdivs, smaller search radius and you can increase the caustics multipler to make them stronger.
Can you post your settings?
this render was at defautlt settings..
I played with many parameters but cannot get much different result.
but I didnot raise caustics subdivisions before- let me try that
Yeah try 3000-4000 see how that looks and lower your saerch distance to say 5cm or even lower.. but you may neeb more suddivs.
Notice that caustics are less visible in HSV color mode.
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=19733&highlight=hsv+caustics
I used only vraysun for the caustics in the scene (no extra light source for the caustics) with reinhard color mapping.
Also it depend of water surface too…
when lower search distance, it gets very dark inside pool :roll:
my color mapping is linear.
I just wanted to learn something.
u have one sun illuminatig all scene and generating caustics too but your photon emit radius must be covering only pool.
does this fast up things too?
I mean I can understand that it focuses photos in that area and it also saves time I think - not calculating caustics in areas we are not bothered.
OR do you think we must define photon radius as the all of scene?
PS: soon will sending the render with more subdivisions.
I think this was the point
u have one sun illuminatig all scene and generating caustics too but your photon emit radius must be covering only pool.
does this fast up things too?
Yes only cover the pool!
One of the reason was to preserve caustics bouncing from windows glases, metal, etc…
Probably this make faster caustics calculation
here is render with 4500 subdivisions