Hi there! I was following a lighting tutorial and decided to make my own scene. There’s no reference, I just randomly took the assets from PolyHaven. I feel like the scene is almost done, but something is still off. Maybe it’s also the lighting, idk.
Can I ask some feedbacks and suggestions from you guys?
(And please let me know which rendering attempt you prefer. 
)
Rendering attempt 1 (with fog and dust)
Rendering attempt 2 (without fog and dust)
Viewport Display
I am not expert in things like this, but the stuff that strikes me as “off” are:
I like the cat sculpture staring into the water. That is a nice bit. Maybe a hint of color under the water to suggest he is staring at fish or something?
I look forward to what you do with this.
Thanks Michael! I will work on what you suggested.
Yeah, that’s me when I used a spot light with texture node. Should I turn it off?
I like that. It could also represent reflections/caustics from the water’s surface.
Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, that’s messing with me. It is shining in the opposite direction as the rest of the outdoor lighting and I see no indication that the water has enough light on it to produce caustics like that.
Remember, though, that just because I don’t personally think it needs it, that’s just my off-the-cuff armchair expert remarks. Ultimately the image has to work for you and produce the result you want. When playing with images (and even in IRL photography) you often mess with parameters like light to get an effect you want to see.
EDIT. Something worth noting (and that I had a hard time learning) was that often a sharper contrast between lights and darks produces a better image, even at the cost of apparent loss of detail.
Hey, just wanted to head you up with an update. Here’s what I did:
* I did put some fish into the water, but it’s kinda hard to see with this angle. I hope that small waves is convincing.
Render vs. Composition
I’m hoping that this is slightly better? Looking forward to hear more feedback 
Superior — much improved. I am wholly impressed.
How does that work? Can you link procedural textures like noise or voronoi to light? And project patterns as a result? Or only image textures?
A great image, in any case!
Thanks, Alan! Yes, I used the procedural textures by following this tutorial: https://youtu.be/X9YmJ0zGWHw?si=4MHpeLoCZhEHz-Gz
You can check “Use Nodes” and paste the texture nodes to the light.
Just tried out a few different camera angles and focal length, with enhanced lightings.
(focal length: 200mm)
(The fish are somewhat visible in this one. Can you spot them? 
)
The only thing is that I can’t make real-time caustics of the water. Fake texture is good, but I want to make it accurate. 
That very last one (24) is excellent.
I already set 21 as my desktop background. (It’s my current favorite, though 24 almost beat it.)
(The framing in 26 is off-center, and there isn’t enough action in the water for a still image to justify it.)
I wouldn’t worry too much about caustics in an outdoor condition such as you have, but for in-pool caustics Blender can do that for you as well. Again, YouTube has a number of tutorials on setting it up, and it is shockingly easy.
Here in NJ we have a more brackish water (that we call “cedar water”) — there’s nothing wrong with it, just not that clear — your water is otherworldly by comparison, lol.
Very nice!
Wow thank you!
That means a lot to me 
(happy tears)
I see. I will take a look at the tutorials. I’ve seen some people use Unity/UE to make a very good interactive caustics. I don’t know if Blender can do that. I will dive into it as well.
Ahh, that’s cool. It’s interesting to know! I’ll pretend that mine is “cedar water” as well 
Caustics that are generated at the water’s surface and scattered into the surroundings (reflective)? Or caustics that act below the water’s surface at the bottom of the lake (refractive)?
You then have two options: NMEE Shadow Caustics and “natural” caustics via pathguiding. The latter are often the better choice, IMHO, because they aren’t limited to caustics in the shadows - but for underwater scenes, this often doesn’t matter, since there are practically always shadow areas involved. Pathguiding renders more slowly, as it (unfortunately) doesn’t work with GPU rendering. This feature is supposed to be added eventually.
The results vary greatly depending on the type of light source, its position, its intensity, etc.
If you don’t want any reflections above the water’s surface (often more pronounced with pathguiding), you can completely disable reflective caustics in the general render settings. And with NMEE caustics, you can decide which objects should be included (receive/cast).
If you need tips on setting up either method, let me know. NMEE is somewhat spread across several settings and tabs.
pathguiding-cpu-caustics.blend (135.9 KB)
nmee-shadow-caustics.blend (136.3 KB)
Thank you! Wow this is very helpful. I’ll try it out and let you know 
Hey, I got very insteresting results.
I used Dynamic Paint to create small rippling waves. The pathguiding method gives me very good refractive caustics for the waves. And…it’s indeed slow to render (6 minutes with 800 samples). Whereas the MNEE doesn’t give me any response.
pathguiding
MNEE
They both work well with Ocean Modifier waves, though. Could Dynamic Paint waves be an edge case for MNEE caustics? 
(I didn’t change any other setups.)
For NMEE caustics, you need to configure various settings to specify which objects emit caustics and which receive them. This is primarily done in “Object Properties” under the “Shading” section.
For example, for the seabed, it would look like this:
For each object in the scene that should represent caustics, you have to individually check “receive”. For the water surface in the same section, you would then check “cast”.
In the “Render Properties” settings, you should set the Glossy filter to 0 (if you haven’t already).
Then it should work
Wow 
Looks phantastic.
