Caustic Effects Tutorial finalRender for Maya by Edwin Braun
8NOTE: Please install the latest patch first before doing the caustic. Get the Patch here: https://www.cebas.org/cebasWall/forum/topic/30
In this tutorial, Edwin Braun will show you finalRender for Maya features for Caustic Effects. Again, you will have to download and use the patch before this will work.
Download the tutorial files here:
https://www.cebas.org/cebasWall/forum/topic/29
Scene - Camera - Lights - Objects - Floor.
Edwin will show you how to achieve photo-realism caustic effects on the three glass spheres.
" In optics, a caustic or caustic network is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface. ... Therefore, in the adjacent image, the caustics can be the patches of light or their bright edges." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caustic_(optics))
SETTINGS
- Do a first render to see what is there. So, by default the shadows are transparent / not seen. Therefore, the image as is, is not photo realistic, in depicting translucent glassy objects. We will need caustic effects.
Make sure these settings are activated:
- fRArchitectural materials - Advanced Transparency Options - under Refractive Caustics, select ' Caustic Shadows.' Check this for every object in the scene. Once selected, finalRender will auto-calculate differently and you see black shadows appearing below each of the spheres. This is because the light beams that will create refraction has not been activated.
- Look at the objects nurbsSphere3shape - under Advanced Rendered Stats: set it as shown ' Received Caustics' and "cast Caustics'.
- Then go to the master setup to the left menu, under spotlight - spotLightShape1: under Caustics & GI - select 'Emit Photons.' This is the light or photon imager.
- do a 2nd render and you see it is still not perfect as the shadows are still pitch black.
- what you have to do is called out the finalRender RENDER SETTINGS for ' GI and Caustic' - under Caustics Options - On Enable Caustics (by default it will turn on related fields.)
- Now do a 3rd render and you see the photos appearing in the shadows.
- Adjust the parameters such as Radius (affects the fineness / subtlety of the photon interpolation) ; Accuracy @ 30 ( fine tunes the photon light) and you now see the Caustics Effect appearing.
- Back to spotLightShape1 : you can further fine-tune the Caustics Photons - pump that up to 50,000. Re-render and check the caustics, then up to 500,000 and re-render.
- to tie in the edges of the spotlight photons, adjust Accuracy and Radius under Caustics Options. You will see nice details.
What else affects Caustics?
- manoeuvre the POSITION and ANGLE of the LIGHT SOURCE and this will change the focal points and the shadows on the floor.
- the MATERIAL itself - the IOR (index of refraction) again you can adjust this and create caustics.
Check out the rest of the videos: Head over to: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLr2jKyAz7bts6g3IcV5ct3tKWaKsMaphc
Get into the Core Community Forum - register @ www.cebas.org/cebasWall - post your renderings, comments and questions in the fR Maya forum.
Thank you for watching.
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