Caustics playground!

[Giona]

Quick test on a 3D model from Artemide of one of their new products.
I wanted to see the differences of light with and without caustics.
What a difference! Also for the rendering time...

Without caustics: 8 min, NL 1.90, 47 passes
With caustics: 1h 30min, NL 3.29, 412 passes

Without caustics


With caustics:

[SoniKalien]

I modeled a projector type headlamp as closely as possible to real-life:

material caustics off - render caustics off:



material on - render off:



material off - render on:



material on - render on:

[FrostKiwi]

Since caustics are the noisiest part of the image once turned on, naturally you would want to set some setting to number crunch caustics more than the rest of the image.
As I understand, caustics are calculated with the every pass.

So If you have noise from caustics, you should lower AA vs GI to get more Passes done in the same render time, just like with DOF and MoBlur.
I tested it and it seems to be the case. Both images had a 10 minute limit. GIvsAA = 4 managed 76 Passes and GIvsAA = 32 managed 31 Passes. GIvsAA 4 was cleaner than 32.

So noise from caustics = lower GIvsAA.
Is my notion correct? Makes me recall that Dynamic GIvsAA on the roadmap...

[martinsik]

Since caustics are the noisiest part of the image once turned on, naturally you would want to set some setting to number crunch caustics more than the rest of the image.
As I understand, caustics are calculated with the every pass.

So If you have noise from caustics, you should lower AA vs GI to get more Passes done in the same render time, just like with DOF and MoBlur.
I tested it and it seems to be the case. Both images had a 10 minute limit. GIvsAA = 4 managed 76 Passes and GIvsAA = 32 managed 31 Passes. GIvsAA 4 was cleaner than 32.

So noise from caustics = lower GIvsAA.
Is my notion correct? Makes me recall that Dynamic GIvsAA on the roadmap...

Yes, it is exactly like you say.

[Dippndots]

One of our recent projects was screaming out for caustics with all the glassware and colorful lights, here's the caustic's pass from one of the the cameras. The ceiling spots are supposed to be dichroic lights, faked it with 3 lights with different IES profiles and colors.

[Giona]

Anyone tried the caustics on a large scene? For example reflective caustics on a road from glass facade of a tall building.
I made a quick test on an old scene, but it was not working.
I'll post later an image

[romullus]

This is known limitation, currently caustics may not work in bigger scenes.

[Ondra]

we already fixed it and it will be probably released in next daily build

[Giona]

Great! Can't wait to test the new build.

[peterguthrie]

Looking forward to the fix for larger scenes, currently moving a scene closer to the origin and at some point it seems to start working

[Frood]

Caustic Courtyard!
(simplified test scene)

I wanted to be able to render something like this as easy as it is now using Corona v4 since... for quite a long time ;]


Good Luck

[Tanakov]

One of our recent projects was screaming out for caustics with all the glassware and colorful lights, here's the caustic's pass from one of the the cameras. The ceiling spots are supposed to be dichroic lights, faked it with 3 lights with different IES profiles and colors.

AmajGawd this looks amazing

This is exactly the caustics I was waiting for in corona

[Giona]

Another test.
Inspired by an artistic installation by Finnbogi Petursson.
I'll try to refine this image with better shaders, and I'm planning to make a short animation.

[peterguthrie]

was the fix for larger scenes included in the daily build on the 7th? dont see anything about it in the changelog

[rowmanns]

was the fix for larger scenes included in the daily build on the 7th? dont see anything about it in the changelog

Hi,

It was not in that build (7th), it will be coming soon though.

Thanks,

Rowan