caustics help needed ::::

[choochee]

I'm doing a basement with a window to the depth of a swimming pool and would like to implement caustics in the image. I'm using MAYA 5 and rendering the scene with mental ray but I'm still unfamilliar with generating caustics. Look at the scene and tell me if U know the best way to try and do it....

[ch83575]

I was trying to set up a similar thing only last night. Theoreticaly you could set up some ripply water in the pool, then apply a dielerctic_photon (sp?) shader to the surface, then apply a parti_volume_photon shader to simulate the volume of water (probably with some noise), then point a light at it and emit photons! Problems is that volume shader is a bitch! It requires that it be contained in another volume (either global or by applying it to a bounding box container) and the settings for each volume are crutial.

 

Easy way: Forget "physicaly accurate" and do it like we always have... fake it. Use a 2d noise node on your light map, and turn on volume fog. The 2d noise will make it look streeky instead of smokey (like a 3d node would). Still a lot of tweeking, but easier tweeking in my opinion!