In this video, I will show you how to set up some simple caustics on a scene. Caustics allows light to bounce off of reflective objects and go though refractive objects to produce realistic light patterns. Caustics can take a long time to calculate, but in product shots, it can really help with making the scene more realistic.
With Caustics
Without Caustics
Outstanding tutorial !
Awesome Tut Nick! Another tool for my tool box!
Happy Holidays!
Nice, although it might have been a better example to use glass, since that is often where caustics are needed. Nevertheless, great tutorial as always. Keep up the god work Nick!
Hey Nick! Nice Tuuut. Dumb unrelated question tho, what kind of keyboard you sportin? Cheers!
Hey Jake! It’s a late 90s Roland XP-80.
Dope man! Should call you MajorScaleGorilla (hehe, just realized thats MSG too) Cheers!
Awesome.
LOVE your new site, brother! Practically every bit of it is embracing, just not that weird grey 45º drop-shadow on the text in the header items. That’s all, haha!
Keep it up, you rock!
Hey Nick, I’m getting some strange display problems with the site. The text in the description for the tutorial runs into the column on the far right. Looks fine when I click on the link and go to the post though.
Also using Safari, sorry.
Love your tuts Nick, and this one is no exception! Great work, keep it up!
Hi, Nick thank you for Tut.
But i have problem with C4D R13 every-time I start it and add object the app not \ stop responding . In every time !!!
Looks fantastic
Outstanding tutorial thx sir
You can also use caustics with GI, i don’t know about the indirect illumination tho…
Took a stab at this, found that the direction of the spot lights has a lot to do with the caustic patterns:
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/553/ringsqtk.png
Gonna use this a lot more, I always thought caustics was just for water and jello.
I like the red tones
Sorry, for dumb question but i really wonder what is this font that you use this site it’s looking great
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/683/ringscaustics.jpg/
By the way this is my result
I really don’t like mine colors colors really hard for me…
Beautimus! This has gone well…
Hey Nick, just to thank you once again, but i have an idea. ¿Why dont you and chris do a tutorial togueter? A little modeling and animation from Chris and u in the second part de lightening, ¿What do you say?
*A 5 min animation, a project for a commercial or something. Thank you!
here’s my go at it, but I deviated a bit.
http://ahrima13.deviantart.com/#/d4hm8kb
I liked the spotted dot effect that caustics can have so I left some of that in. Did a bit of color correction and blur in photoshop
Thank you Nick! Great quick tip!
You’re making awesome things in simple way! That’s awesome!
Thank you again!)
Hi there from Russia
Hey there, Can you supply us with maybe some texture files? If not I understand why. My metalic structure isnt anywhere near as good as yours…. Id just like to see if spruced up.
That is awesome nick, great tut. love it
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Nick! Great tutorial! Love it…Here is what I came up with:
I also thought using the same set up would work nicely with a simple glass…although I’m still trying to tweak the settings, cause you can tell I’m not getting enough Photons on the floor in this scene…but I like it nonetheless!
http://geoffburns.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CausticFunGlass.0047.jpg
Sorry…it wouldn’t let me embed the video…heres the link:
http://vimeo.com/32847964
Very Pretty! I like how with caustics there is some light that bounces off of the surface to fill in some of the shadow areas.
Hello, Nice tutorial as always. I find that faking a chromatic aberration effect in C4D add some dramatic effect by duplicating light & changing a color to RED GREEN and BLUE whith a little offset
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26565805@N06/6426316433/in/photostream without
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26565805@N06/6426315553/in/photostream/ with
http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=323509Capture.png THANKS
Nice tip FETHI. It definitely adds that little x-factor to the scene.
Thanks very good tutorial and easy to follow.
This is my try with caustics:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/CBh4T8k7EF3mST9jvczZYdVkneLDwkHMkY0UEhSmSek?feat=directlink
really usefull knowledge!
thanks you
what a bummer, isn’t enabled in the R12 Broadcast Version?
Greetings
Nope. R12 Studio only.
I have an old setup for some animated pool water with caustics. It can be downloaded here if anybody is interested: http://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=107999
With dynamics, MB, DOF.
300,000 photons and still pretty noisy some areas.
http://vimeo.com/32925357
Hey Nick ich bin der Dave und komme aus Germany und ich wollte dir nur mal sagen
ja das warst dann erstmal ich wünsche dir weiter hin alles gute mfg Dave:)
das du echt der beste bist ich feier deine sachen du machst das echt gut
und du bist echt ne hilfe ich bin ein grosser fan von c4d und es macht mir einen sehr grossen spass
bei dir zu lernen ich würde mich über ne feedback sehr freuen wende magst kannste mich ja mal auf meine seite besuchen unter http://fliso-design.blogspot.com
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Thank you Nick, nice tut. Here’s my try:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53417514@N06/6461919229/
Cool stuff! Here is my experiment with caustics.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chadronning/6472760845/in/photostream
Hi,
Can caustics be used with the GSG Light Kit Pro???
As I understand it, all lights are disabled in the scene and luminance is used.
Thanks
Im not sure why, but the floor I’m using isn’t picking up the caustics.
I’m trying to animate some little crystals growing out of an arm rail in live-action footage.
so, my floor is a cylinder (sized to match the real rail), and I have it textured with the background image set to “frontal” and a compositing tag to make it invisible against the background to catch the shadows and caustics.
the shadows are being cast onto it correctly.
but the caustics aren’t.
I have everything checked from this tutorial and to double check, I set the caustics to render as a separate multi-pass.
In the caustics multi-pass channel of a single-frame render, they show up, but in the overall composite render there’s nothing there, which makes me think it’s the floor surface.
Any suggestions?
excellent tutorial thank you…my version here: http://www.electricpalette.co.uk/Images.html#0