Different shadow caustics in viewport and final render

I’m currently doing an architectural rendering with glass bricks. Since I’m trying to create an accurate and specific pattern of shadows on the wall I’m using shadow caustics. The strange thing is that I’m getting very different results in the final render and the viewport render. In the viewport, everything looks as it should be and in the final render, the caustic effect nearly disappears.
Even more strange is that the problem only appears with the versions of the glass bricks where I used the displacement modifier to create the pattern on the Brick. With the version where I only used the displacement shader, it seems to work.

I checked multiple times If I accidentally activated/deactivated any objects/modifiers in the viewport or render but apparently that’s not the problem.

If someone has any idea what it could be, I’d be very thankful.


glass brick with displacement modifier

Welcome to the community!

Do you have any object that’s disabled in the viewport but active at render time? From the outliner in your image, it seems it may be the case.

I’m looking for complicated answers for almost 2 hours now for the exact same problem. caustics not rendering the same way from viewport. i’m learning a lot about OptiX and OID. about filter glossy, light clamping, light distribution. about differences of rendering in viewport and final render. nothing changes.

finally it was just an object i made invisible in viewport messing with light.. even after years of blending, you sometimes just need to go back to basics :slight_smile:

thank you so much