DSDN 104: "Would you like some caustic with that?"

So I decided to check out this tutorial on 3dsMax' caustic effects, recommended to us by our tutor.

Essentially what caustics are is a certain way of lighting an object, and then letting the render calculate the actual paths of the photons through the object, and refracting the light accordingly. It can produce amazing effects and really push the model in terms of lighting.

So I went off and created my own caustic experiments!

This first one was very much a test to see what would happen when I applied a glass texture to my model and then chucked some caustics on. I found the results were astonishing. Rather than just making a shadow for the model, the light tracks all the way through it and shatters all over the scene. It definitely gave me a wow-moment.

Here I tried narrowing the light spread, by pulling the light on the left closer to the model, hence the light wouldn't be spread as far. The light points also seem to be brighter for some reason!

The glass prior to this render was clear, but then I decided to apply some colour to it. It's interesting, because the really bright points lack the colour, while the less dense points attract more of the colour.

I flicked the light over to the other side for this one, and the light seemed to get much brighter. The points of red also got far more intense. For my final, I definitely want to mellow out the actual strength of the lighting, so as to make sure the model is what's important, not the light.

Here I used a model with a different material, namely water. 3dsMax, surprisingly, generates a totally different effect with water as opposed to glass. I kind of like the way the light is splashed all over the scene. It's so random and awesome like this. But I think it detracts a little too much from the model for my liking.

I applied a glass material to one part of this model, and water to another part. I also lit the scene with multiple lights and this really benefited the lighting by making the caustic effect much more subdued. However, my favourite element of this render is the way the light goes through the aqua coloured glass.

For my final render, I'm going to definitely work with the more subdued shading, and also with the dual-material element.