I started a render this morning and then saw it was going to take a while, so left it and went out. Came back 5 hours later and back to this. I've stopped it at 50% through the AA pass, hence the bottom half is incomplete.

But it's doing that stupid corruption banding crappy stuff about 1/3 of the way down (and a little near the top).

Bryce can sometimes be soul destroying.

grrrr. Guess I'll start again.

You may recognise the room from a picture a did a while back.

Now a question. The viewpoint is from under water, so looking at everything through the surface of the water is distorted. So that's fine and everything under the water isn't distorted (tiles) so that's fine too. But see the light coming through the window and then through the water and hitting the right wall of the pool?... Should that have a more pronounced ripple effect, since the light is going through ripples before hitting the side of the pool? Guess I'll have to go take a swim and see what it looks like in real life.

I seem to recal something about upping the TIR to get a more realist up out of the water interface. Also the water should have a perceptable haze (not a lot, just some and a bluish cast with distance) Try a volume slab cut with your surface terrain.

Sometimes Bryce can do some weird stuff. When I work with terrains, I layer one on top of another to get more detail and if I tilt them, sometimes I get unintended transparent holes showing through,.........never been able to figure out why.

a perfect alignment of surface polygons can induce a confusion in almost any render engine as it trys to figure which texture to display. in that situation i would tweak the rotate or resize just a shade to help remove such a line up.

I think I've solved the banding problem. They are in line with radials I had in there. I tried to create lamps by putting a radial inside a high ambience sphere inside a solid glass sphere. Get rid of the spheres and it's fine.

Couldn't you just apply a caustic light gel to the light to get the rippling effect under the water line?

yeah, might try that. setting a a transparancy texture on the ater SHOULD work though. Well, it does work, you can just see it in the light on the right. I'll try various things to increase it. I was more concerned that it should be distorted rather than the caustics.

maybe the banding is 'cause of soft shadows through transparent surfaces at normal render mode? soft shadows create those artefacts with transparent objects whenever you're not in premium mode.

Tried making water out of solid terrains,imported objects, nothing works. The light and shadow on the walls should be distorted while the tiles should still be square. I tried making a lens in bryce. it magnifies objects but it doesn't bend (light)? itself.

Tried making several and changing the height. The focus doesn't change. Without the object actually refracting the rays the light won't distort from the caustics. The only thing I can think of doing is to set your pool to gray and photograph the light through your caustic plane applied to a terrain with glass as a material. Do the second render with the tile material restored and receive shadows off. create a mask from the gray render and apply the light and shadow as a layer in postwork.

Or you could try a square parallel with a caustic image applied as a gel shining into the pool. I would use one of these for the overall room light and a separate one for the light from the windows (angles appropriately of course)

I don't think caustics are the problem. I'm about 33% through AA render and I can see the caustics in the light shining on the walls. But the lights edges are very straight. I just seems to me that they should be distorted. Think I might keep it going as is and hope no one notices. ;-) Hopefully you'll all forget this conversation by tomorrow.

postwork with a clone or distortion tool?

The render has finished and it does actually distort the light. I think I have the refraction set so low that it's a little subtle. But it's there. I'll post the picture here and in the gallery so you can see. The caustics are showing up as well. It may not be realistic, but looks OK.

Here's the uploaded version. Pretty sure the light hitting the wall is refracted, just not very much. It's a compromise between making it more refracted and not being able to see through the water. I need to play some more. But quite happy for now.

Actually, what I thought was distortion isn't. It's the shadow of the poser models elbow. :-( OK, tired of this. More playing tomorrow.

OK, I lied, more playing tonight. But last one I promise. You can't put a radial above the water and expect the caustics to reflect onto the walls like in real life. You can however put a radial under the water and get a similar effect.

You can't really see the window clearly from below anyway right? Why don't you render the back wall and warp the frame using smudge tools in your paint program? Create an image and transmap and apply to a 2d in bryce. Delete the original wall and use the 2d for your underwater shot. If the water texture warps it it will just appear more warped from below.

Actually. THat makes sense. I wonder if I could use a vertical warped terrain to distort the window?.... I'll be back in a minute. (Trying to do this just in Bryce for the pure raw challenge. ;-)

Of course, I'm being stupid. I'm still gonna come across the same problem, I've just moved it to the wall rather than the water surface. Looks like I'm back to your plan.

OK, electroglyph, you win. I don't think Bryce can do it on it's own. So, two options. I'll try your suggestion, or move the light so the rays don't enter the water ;-) This picture shows that Bryce doesn't distort rays through a warped terrain unless you're looking through the terrain. Shame.