here is a quickly put together tutorial.
http://www.elfpro3d.com/Swimming/swimming.html
good tutorial elf. 
very cool. thanks!!
Great job 8)
--Jon
That’s awesome! Thanks!
Also, if you guys need/want to generate your own caustics, then I found this cool little app to help you out:
cool…what i would like is a max file with the finished pool, because i’m lazy. 
I need some help here.
I started going through the tutorial, but I’ve never used Gradient mapping like this before.
My problem is I cant get it to fill the shaded area cleanly.
See the attached images
When I adjust the location of the gradient it goes too far the other way
I’v tried just about everything I can think of but as you can see from the second image,when I move the slider too far, I get a strange sphere effect.It almost looks like a mapping issue, but I don’t think it could be.
Any ideas?
thx
make sure there is a softer edge to those two inbetween points it should soften up that circle your getting, my 1st attempts were with falloff using light/shadow but it didnt give me as much control as the gradient ramp was giving me.
I turned the softness of to exagerate what I was talking about. But I think I have it pretty close.
My water material needs work though. Can you point me to the material converter. I remember seng that posted not too long ago but I cant find it now. BTW why are converting the EGZ glass material?
Doh!
I think I figured out why you convert to a Vray mat.
I just went to add a bump map to EGZ glass mat.
Does anyone have the link to the material converter?
BBullo:
There isnt a script, you just type in the script your self into the maxscript window. Just make sure you change the number of your material if yours doesnt happen to be 3 like Da_Elf’s
Hey Great tut Da_Elf, really good idea
thanks guys. i guess it was about time i sat down and wrote that. i had mentioned i would do a tut a while back since i 1st this image
http://www.elfpro3d.com/bigcnet.jpg
maybe you could also use a map to project the caustics from the lightsource thats excluding everthing but the pool.
Hi Elf!
Really nice tutorial, but I think you have to post your light settings, because they play a big role where the caustics map will display (because of the gradient ramp map - when it is set to lighting, it is dependable on the light). :?
that could work too. however you wouldnt have the control to be able to stop the caustics from going above water. as a material effect you get better control. also…and i point to BBulos problem. the reason he was getting that area was because (and i had to fight with this too.) the falloff map and gradient map take the total amount of light and shadow into account. meaning that its not just from the direct light but also from skylight. which if there is a tiiiiny bit of caustics bled into the shadow area it wouldnt be so bad in my oppinion.
my light settings i think were multipliers of 1 and 1 for direct light and skylight then 0.6 for linear color mapping. i forget how much it was though. might have been 0.6 and 0.6 for skylight and direct light multipliers and a default 1 1 for color mapping which usd to be my standard lighting setup. it would be nice if there was a light shadow material or map plugin that will allow you to specify your light source from a drop down list of lights in the scene.
and when you say: “Now i will apply a bitmap texture of caustics to the two green flags and set the purple ones to light blue.” what do you mean - the two most right tags, or the two that are green on the picture on the tutorial?
ok. ive re-written a few parts of the tutorial and put in a nice WARNING disclaimer at the beginning. if anyone knows of a pluging map that can specify the light source to use for the shadow i would love to know which it is. i tried the blur light/shadow map(or material) but after loading it i couldnt find it anywhere. maybe it doesnt work with max7 and so shouldnt be put in the max7 section on maxplugins.de does anyone know any other good free plugin sites? i always thought www.maxplugins.de was petty comprenensive one
Thanks for the tutorial Da elf. I fanally got it to look pretty good. You are right about the having the gradient ramp set to light effecting GI lit areas. I turns out this was my problem. There was too much light bouncing onto the back wall in view.
Now this could be a silly question… But anyhow: Where do I find/get that EGZ glass -material?