BASIC CAUSTIC WITH VRAY PLUGINS

in this tutorial, we'd better using 3ds max's plug ins, V-Ray

i setup the scene, create a box, and a torus knot
added a spot light
- shadows on (vray shadows)
- under vray parameters check the smooth surface shadows

i’m not gonna explain everything what i did, you can see for you self if you download the scene

and render the scene out, you should have something like :



now first off we’ll create some materials, so get into the material editor and seleect a new material, change it it vray material
- change reflection and refraction color to white
- check Fresnel reflections
- choose a very licht blue color as Fog color
- set fog multi. to 0.01
- check Affect shadows

assign it to the torus knot

now create a other material, also a vray material
for diffuse color select a light grey

and if you render you have something like this :



now we are missing the caustics, here we go:
get your vray renderer and goto vray:system
click light settings and select spot01

click “generate caustics” on
subdivs : 2500
multi : 100000.0

now go back to the render dialog and search for vray:caustic tab
click “on”
multi. : 4
search dist. : 0.4
max photon : 2000

and render it out you should get something like :



to get some better caustics change to
multi. : 2
search dist. : 0.4
max photon : 2500
also change the under vray:system -> lightsettings > spot01 caustics subdive to 5000

also add a meshsmooth to the torus (render Iter. 2)

then render it out

this is gonna take long, calculating the caustics but well,



source : http://www.cg-files.com/

WATER MATERIAL WITH VRAY PLUGINS

in this tutorial, we'd better using 3ds max's plug ins, V-Ray.

1. Open Material Editor by pressing M on your keyboard.

2. Click on Get Material button, and chouse Vray material from Materail/Map Browser



3. Rename material to “Water”

4. Click on Diffuse color, and set to black.



5. For the Reflect color use this settings: Red 232, Blue 232, Green 232



6. In the Refraction menu change Refract color to pure white and change Max depth to 10. See picture below.



7. Scroll down and find Options menu. Just turn on “Reflect on back side”



That is all. Like I said this material is for V-ray. Just to know, results of this material while you render also depend from your Render and Lighting settings

source : http://www.cg-files.com/

TEXTURING GLASS WITH VRAY PLUGINS

First, bring up the Render Scene dialog (hit F10) and switch to vRay renderer



Go to the Renderer tab and check the On box under the V-Ray: Indirect Illumination (GI) rollout.



Next, under the V-Ray: Iradiance map rollout set the Current Preset to Medium and check the Show calc. phase and Show direct light boxes.



Now hit M to bring up the Materials. Select one of the slots at the top then hit the Standard button to change the material type.





Now set the Diffuse color to 0, 0, 0 (black).



Set the Reflect color to 230, 230, 230.



Under the Reflection rollout check the Fresnel reflections box and set the Max Depth to 10.



Just below, under the Refraction rollout set the Refraction color to 255, 255, 255 (white) and the Max Depth to 10.



Finally, under the Options rollout check the Reflect on back side box.



With the glass object selected, hit the Assign Material to Selection button.



Bring up the Environment and Effects dialog by hitting "8" on your keyboard. Set the Background Color to 45, 45, 45.



Your glass scene is pretty much done. For better results add a couple of vRay lights with large surfaces and maybe a few more objects.


source : http://www.tutorialized.com/

CAUSTIC WITH MENTALRAY PLUGINS

Caustics are really great light effects that you can observe in liquids, glass objects and gems. We are able to simulate this effect with 3D Studio Max perfectly. This tutorial about Caustics will work only if you enable "Mental Ray”!

Step 1: Let's Create a small room like on image "1" (try to do that in realistic sizes, it is important that you make the setup of the "unit system", only in this way Mental Ray will give you an optimal end result since it will consider all measurements of the objects in the scene for the final rendering).Now create your lights to illuminate the room.

There are several techniques to create a correct illumination. In the case of the room I have created 3 long "free area lights" like on below image (you can find them under photometric lights).



Step 2: Place them under tree long boxes. Select the bottom polygons of the boxes and assign them a white self illuminated material like below image.



Step 3: To get a more realistic illumination I have enabled Final Gather in "indirect illumination". I put a quite high number in "samples" to make the final rendering (600).



Step 4: After you made the room you must create the water. We can do that with a simple box. To create the small waves on the surface you have different possibilities (or with a material or by polygons). For transparent water material creates a "Raytrace" material (it must be transparent and a bit reflective). To create a wave effect put in the "bump map" a "noise"-map with a quite small size; to simulate trough geometry deformation the noise/wave effect you must apply to the box a "noise modifier". The wave size will influence the caustic shapes. Big waves/noise = Big caustic shapes!

After you made all the objects you must create a "MR Area Omni" light on the top of the water in the center of the room like step 2 image. Now make a right mouse button click on the MR. Area Omni and disable "AFFECT SPECULAR" and "AFFECT DIFFUSE". Get a more realistic illumination I have enabled Final Gather in "indirect illumination". I put a quite high number in "samples" to make the final rendering (600).



Step 5: After this step this MR.Area Omni will NOT anymore affect the illumination of the room. We will use that MR.Area Omni ONLY to create the caustic effects. In this way we have much more control of the caustic position, color and brightness. Disable shadows in the MR.Area Omni.

Now select the MR.Area Omni and all other objects except the lights that you have created for illumination (Free area lights). Make a right mouse button click on all the selection and select properties.





Final Step: Go on the "Mental Ray" panel and check "GENERATE CAUSTICS”. This is necessary in order to have a caustic effect on the objects. Now we must go to the "INDIRECT ILLUMINATION" panel and enable "CAUSTICS".

To improve the quality of the caustics (better/clearer shapes) you must go to "LIGHT Properties" and put a VERY high number in "AVERAGE CAUSTIC PHOTONS PER LIGHT".I put a bit less than one million. For test renderings it is enough to put 10.000. The higher the number, the better will be the effect. Of course it will take much more time to render the entire scene. You can put very high numbers in multiplier (MR.Area Omni) to create a very bright caustic effect. If you change the light color of the MR.Area Omni you will change the color of the caustics ( blue omni color = blue caustics). To have a blue color of the illumination under water the water material should have a blue color in diffuse and transparency. Hope you liked this tutorial.



source : http://www.tutorialized.com/