Caustics doesn't work with displaced material output?

Hello,

I am trying to replicate caustics from this video:

In the video it looks like the creator is using a noise map to generate displacement, thus generating caustics. I have everything set up correctly, caustics caster, solver and emmiter, however no caustics is being generated under displaced mesh.

However, if I displace the mesh using the displace modifier (using noise or musgrave texture), caustics does get generated under the mesh. It also generates if I use the ocean modifier.

So it seems like, for me, caustics works only if geometry is displaced through an actual modifier and not through a material output. How does it work for him though?

Would appreciate it if somebody tried to set up the scene like in the video.

Hi,
if you want that displacement works through material output you need to change this material setting:

Yes, I have it set like that. Still no caustics.

Works only through displacement modifier.

Are you sure he’s not using adaptive subdivision? Blender doesn’t currently have purely material based displacement as far as I know.

Yes, that’s exactly how I set it up. But again it doesn’t generate caustics. It generates caustics only through the Displace modifier. So the geometry has to be actually displaced in the viewport.

I know what you mean, but it’s still displacement through a material output.

Here my quick and very raw try:

As you can see the only modifier is the ‘smooth by angle’.
The scene has:

  1. One sun light with ‘Shadow caustics’ enabled
  2. the water plane with ‘cast shadow caustic’ enabled
  3. the pool with ‘receive shadow caustic’ enabled
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Share your scene so we can take a look and see what the issue is.

Here it is
caustic_test.blend (1.8 MB)

Although I think the other way around would have been faster (OP shares his file…)

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