ugly shadows because of light bouncing off water

[stayinwonderland]

Hi, I have a scene with water right next to a building at night and these wooden lattice things are casting horrible shadows that look like vray dirt or something.

 

anywho, after 2 hours of testing i found out it was the bounced light from the water hitting up and into these wooden beams and casting ugly shadows.

 

Is there a way I can prevent this bounced light from casting such shadows on just the beams? or... something?

 

thanks

[AubreyM]

Select the beams and go to object properties and uncheck Receive Shadows.

[stayinwonderland]

hmm, that didn't and also makes the beams look less realistic. Any other ideas? Something in the vray object properties?

 

here's a render:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]46996[/ATTACH]

 

There are a lot of underwater lights (well, about 6 plane lights) and they all have the beams excluded so it's not from direct light. The only thing that gets rid of the shadows is when I hide the water. Would we agree that such rusty blotchy shadows look bad? The render settings are pretty maxed.

Edited January 29, 2012 by stayinwonderland

[AubreyM]

Just as a test put an override material on the beams and see if there is a change.

[stayinwonderland]

I did this (if this is what you mean). I put a different plain white material on them. No change and the shadow colour stayed the same too.

[AubreyM]

OK, try going into the vray properties of the water and maybe reduce the GI amount. That sometimes works for reflection color bleed problems. If that doesn't help maybe send me your max file and I can have a look.

[stayinwonderland]

ok, tried that and that's not an option either. See the biggest surface in the scene is the water, if i turn the GI on it down to half, you still see the blob and at the expense of darkenning the whole scene.

 

Well, it's most kind of you to offer to look at it. I've uploaded it here. I've removed the trees because they're from forest pack lite, which you may not have. Also haven't included the hdr file coz it's 50mb. Please don't spend much time on it though as these things can eat a night in no time.

 

Thanks!

 

Edit: your opinion on my light set up would be appreicated actually. Here's the sort of thing i'm after and I have little idea how to set up a night scene:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]47003[/ATTACH]

[Ismael]

In your water material Refraction, turn on Affect Shadows.

[stayinwonderland]

Ah, I think that did it. Sort of, I allowed all the lights to affect the beams again, the checked 'affect shadows' and it gave a more realistic shadow. At least the shadow looks more like a shadow and less like a weird splotch:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]47005[/ATTACH]

 

Thanks Ismael

[Ismael]

Andy,

 

Actually, the clues of the lights casting shadows over the beams are missing. I mean, the shadows point in the

general direction of the pool but the lights are not indicated.

 

I did this take from what you provided in your scene and a few mods. If you are curious of anything in it, let me know:

Edited January 30, 2012 by Ismael
another image

[stayinwonderland]

cool, I like the caustics. How did you do them, I can never get them to cast on a wall?

 

Is there another underwater light besides the two in the bottom left?

[Ismael]

The trick to getting the Caustics is the 'thickness' of the water. That was said at the end of this tutorial

which you said you had seen: http://www.cg-blog.com/index.php/2011/12/27/vray-caustics-setup-tutorial.htm, at the very end.

So, I changed the water plane you had for mine and deleted all the lights and replaced with the IES file at the bottom.

To your question, yes, I have 2 IES lamps shining towards the building and they are generating the caustics. The Caustics subdivisions

of them 2 I raised to 3500 in the Vray Properties.

 

 

 

Save the text below as ERCO_77566023_1xPAR30_75W_35deg.ies

 

IESNA:LM-63-2002

[TEST] U100082_0

[TESTLAB] ERCO GmbH

[iSSUEDATE] 28-10-2010

[MANUFAC] ERCO GmbH

[LUMCAT] 77566023

[LUMINAIRE] TM Spotlight

[LAMP] PAR30 75W 35°

TILT=NONE

1 1030 1 19 1 1 2 -0.095 -0.095 0

1.0 1.0 75

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60

65 70 75 80 85 90

0

2000.054 1937.636 1464.66 1128.88 880.65 374.096 140.08 90.64 73.13

66.95 44.29 21.63 0 0 0 0 0 0

0

Edited January 30, 2012 by Ismael
correction

[stayinwonderland]

Thanks for the tip. I think i'll pass though. I don't want my water to have waves or much distortion because it's a calm outdoor pool and I don't want it to be thick because you tend to see the thickness when it terminates at a wall, leaving a line. Cheers though

[Ismael]

Thank you for bringing this subject up. It moved me to try and explore the subject of underground lighting and of caustics which

I never did.