Good night to all. Long time far away.
My problem is with cycles water, it doesn’t apply IOR to shadows. I have an old Blender Internal water and behaves ok.
Can you help me?
Thank you very much!
bad shadow
good shadow
water nodes
bad shadow
good shadow
water nodes
Oi MADCello,
If your scene has a simple illumination (as your pictures show), maybe you can try this workaround to produce caustics.
It’s not suitable for more complex scenes, but for your scene might be all you need to produce a good result.
Ps. Se tiveres dificuldades ou dúvidas sobre como usar esta técnica, posso dar orientações por pm.
Abraço
Thank you for that trick, very good one!
Right now, i’m trying to solve the shadow that is not bending with the rest of the bottom of the pool.
Obrigado 
Transparency shader doesn’t account for any IOR effects. You have to remove it and produce shadows the “proper” way (involving caustics iirc?). Maybe it’s possible to fake it using some sort of shadow only light through a camera invisible hole that just happens to cause a shadow where you want it? I really have no better idea on this one.
That was my fear…i was able to minimize the shadow effect, but i still see a less present shadow.
Re-learning Blender after a few years appart and re-learn new way of doing materials and everything. I know it’s a big task, but step by step i’ll get there.
Thank you!
one possibility could be to emulate global illumination from the water…Instead of letting cycles trace samples from caustics, one can add an emission shader with the background HDR and stop the path tracing at the water…
something like this:
edited: This is suppose to be used with the caustics trick, since the light from the lamp will not shine through the water. Also, the glossy shader at the bottom can be removed and changed by another emission with the ambient color of the underwater part (this way, thought not realistic, can speed up things a bit more, and reduce noise and fireflies)
Thank you!!