Here I am with the image.Yesterday night I had problems in uploading. I tell You another strange thing happening during the rendering.......if i selected a plant after selecting a light (I have used for them the caustic gel Hawkfyr kindly sent me)it automatically was rendered with an "egg" mapped with the caustic gel texture, so I had to delete, recreate and reposition them......it sound quite strange but I swear, it's the truth. Can anybody explain such strange behavior?

Hi Maga, Hmmm...are you applying the caustic gel to the lights? try placing a cone shaped light above the water level shining down on the water, you could try applying the caustic gel in the bump or refraction channel of the water Material, when you load the gel into the picture editor (the first window) select "copy" from the first window and then select "Paste" in the second window,(this will load the gel into the Alpha channel) you will then be asked to delete the current alpha channel,select "Delete" . the third window will display the combination of the first two. now the gel can be used to drive the Alpha channels int the materials editor. now save the gel in your presets so you don't have to load it and do all that stuff again. Hope this isnt adding to the confusion, i'm not sure what caused the "Egg" Artifact, Your Image is filling up and sometimes when you introduce alot of lights ,objects and gels , you get wierd shadowing, try disabling shadows on objects to don't require them,or disable cast shadows in the light editor. is the water a volumetric slab or an infinite plane? Light reacts differently in Slabs. Hope this helps Hawkfyr

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

It looks good, the only thing I would suggest now is to go to your sky editor and add fog to obscure the background and make it look more underwater, eitehr a bluish or greenish fog

Talent is God's gift to you. Using it is your gift to God.

The water is a volumetric slab. Now I increased the diamonds' ambient and refraction as Hawkfyr suggested, and changed material to the plants and it seems to look better. But still a little bit unreal....I added some corals created sith lattice. I would not like to darken too much the scene, as I intended to create a caribbean underwater scene. By the way, I'm also working on another picture, and noticed that when i change the material to one object (i.e. a flat square)all othe object of the same type change material.....maybe I clicked something I ought not.....sigh......

you may have inadvertantly selected "all of type" if you had differnt textured objects within a group, and select the group and change the materiqal it will change all the objects textures within that group so be carefull of that. on my first large picture I had a fit trying to change textures within a group but discovered the ctrl/click feature to select a particular object withina group without ungrouping it. Good luck Maga Hawkfyr

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

As usual you guys are so helpful. I thank you so much....I will soon put this image in my gallery, so you will see my...improvement!!!!!!Thanks again! :)))

Non-Problematic, Glad to help 8 )~ Hawkfyr

“The fact that no one understands you…Doesn’t make you an artist.”

I finished my hard work. If you wish you may have a look in my gallery. I think a little atmosphere is missing, but I've tried different things (spheres with volume mapping and changing atmosphere settings) but nothing worked. I just wanted the water to be less cristalline. Anyway, with your suggestions, things got much better. Any suggestion is welcome even if I don't think I will render again....(7.30 hours....)