imagist opened this issue on Nov 14, 2005 ยท 7 posts
imagist posted Mon, 14 November 2005 at 8:09 PM
Veritas777 posted Mon, 14 November 2005 at 8:41 PM
Actually the very BEST trick I have ever seen for creating FAST caustics is to actually blend them into the texture map- I wish I had the image to show you- of three dolphins- because it really worked great... However, for caustics otherwise- go load the Undersea scenes from the Vue 5, V5I CD's by Michael Jannsen called, amazingly-- "Caustics"... Caustics can be applied through your lights as a Light Gel. You should find at least TWO of them (Caustics)in your Vue Mat Library installation...
Veritas777 posted Mon, 14 November 2005 at 8:43 PM
BTW- for added realism- I would suggest a very SLIGHT light blue color on your lights- to match the natural color lighting of your background image...
imagist posted Tue, 15 November 2005 at 4:30 AM
Hi Veritas thanks for your reply and help. I shall sit down and try and work out how he made his Caustics and see if I can re-create the effect in my scene Regards Keith
bruno021 posted Tue, 15 November 2005 at 7:59 AM
Attached Link: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~kand/caustics/
using a spot light with a caustics light gel is the best and easiest way to cast caustics on your scenes. But the Vue ready made caustics light gels are not very nice. I suggest you use this freeware called "Caustics generator" to make your caustics yourself, and apply it to your light.Veritas777 posted Tue, 15 November 2005 at 12:54 PM
Good tip on the Caustics software. Your main problem in the scene, I think, is that because you are using a photo background, the caustics spot gel won't work on it... -so you might want to use the caustics software that Bruno suggested to ALSO make a subtle caustic effect on the background image- but ONLY in the FOREGROUND area- using Photoshop (or whatever you use). That way it will match with the 3D part...
imagist posted Tue, 15 November 2005 at 6:56 PM
Thanks All for your help, I have downloaded the caustic maker which is excellent and I have saved the Michael Jannsen light as an object and used it in my Dive babe image with some success but I think I will have to work more on this to get those crisp white caustics like you see in swimming pools and shallow tropical waters without volumetric light beams Regards Keith