Challenge #871 "Caustics" (28/02/20) Entries CLOSED

Crystal (Pure Cycles)


The Render itself took about 1 hour and 30 mins.
No extra render engines just pure old Cycles did the job just fine.

8 Likes

I think my computer is crying a little bit. Have my entry rendering.

Gleb Alexandrov advanced glass shader is fairly amazing. His spaghetti node monster is very well laid out. It does use volumetrics which is why my computer is slugging along.

1 Like

Lotus Dazzle

Pure

Cycles, 5000 samples, filmic, border and brightening of image done with Paintshop Pro

Learned a ton. I really didn’t think Cycles could make these types of images. 100% fake caustics. All the light rays are from the shader. I am using one spot lamp on the figurine and two point lamps in the petals to generate the light caustics. I really like the light interplay on the wood frame. I did not expect that.

8 Likes

Fluff

Pure entry, 500 samples with denoising performing miracles. Another fancy pants artsy entry from yours truly (me). When I choose not to decide, I still make a choice.

5 Likes

Glass Sword

Rendered with Luxcorerender with 500 samples and denoising. Pure entry.
This is my first render with Luxcorerender. I tried to get some volumetric caustics on top but failed.


I used textures from https://cc0textures.com/

5 Likes

Fleur

Non-competing. Cycles 256 samples + denoising, a bit of post pro in GIMP. Playing with beveled + low level subsurfed icosphere with a lamp inside.

Icosphere material :

Lamp node setup :

6 Likes

Hello guys, here is my entry.
Pure and rendered in Cycles.
I called it the humanizer project. So maybe it is more appropriate than “render_1” as I do usual.
Cheers!

5 Likes

Piglet

9 Likes

I’ll try and do a Pooh later…

Crystal Clear Pond
Pure, competing


Blender 2.81 Cycles + Compositor
128 samples


That was an interesting scene to make. It’s the first time I have made an underwater scene (which I always wanted to attempt), as well as the first real attempt at making some fake caustics.
The scene just came together so nicely and smoothly.

Here’s some extra details I thought may be useful:
I studied a bit of how the water surface looks from underwater. It turns out similar effects are pretty easy to make.
It really is just a glass shader on a single plane:


However, I made it so that the camera could see it only so the entire scene would still remain bright in low amounts of samples.
My entire render is basically just faking everything. The caustics are just a procedural projection (which I mentioned in a previous post), there are slight volumetrics but I use the mist pass and some fake sun beams made with a gradient node to give the atmosphere and feeling of being underwater.
Here is the compositor setup which is a life saver in how it can add so much more depth to it:

Also, the sun beam node setup might be useful too:


The color ramp node does have a really slight change to make the rays subtle. It is there, on the left side is the slightest of grey.

15 Likes

“Causticus”


non competing (open - reused character + a few changes in gimp), cycles (64 samples)

12 Likes

Relax room

Pure

My first experiment with LuxCoreRender. The light from the spot lamp is reflected from a round mirror under the water surface. It is then creating the caustics around the wall.

10 Likes

Whiskey Pour - Cycles 1024 samples - AI Denoiser + GIMP colour correction - Non-competing

Non-competing because I couldn’t actually get any decent looking cuastics working so not really on topic. Good fun though and quite happy with the result but messed around too much trying to get any light to pass in an interesting way through the glass, liquid and ice. Should have started with something more simple. Also a first time using fluids in blender, again more messing about not really knowing what things did. Look forward to trying again with them though!

12 Likes

Wow reminds me of Michigan in the UP!
The water there is so clear.
Great job!

“Lurking” - LuxCoreRender, 40 min on Ryzen 7 2700x + RTX 2080, rendered with caustics cache.
Open, non-competing.
Re-used the pebbles from last weeks entry, but created a new water surface with the ocean modifier.
Crab from http://threedscans.com/

15 Likes

cycles 10000 samples, simple test, non competing :slight_smile:
made with “Glass Caustics and Dispersion Shader” from @JettG_G

4 Likes

That’s making me think of Dark Crystal, only seen one episode of the new series but also watched the making of it.

Save me a marshmallow please!

Lots of non-competing for this topic. Probably because Cycles doesn’t handle caustics, only a lame blurry passthrough. Caustics are not blurry at all, they’re very sharp and bright concentrations of light due to refraction. External renderers like Lux Render or yafaray should be used…

Really struggling with camera position… Will attempt again later if time… (else accept previous please Helge!)

Wanted to put grass, shading, a signpost, etc, and remove some lines… Had to use 4 render layers just to get proper delineation in…

1 Like

Dolphin Family
Pure entry


100% fake caustics using Eevee

11 Likes