Rayraz
01-23-2006, 12:37 PM
Hey,
I'm making an animation at the moment that uses a water object with caustics. I love the look the caustics give to the water, but it is a dramatic increase on the rendertimes.
So I was thinking, maybe it would be possible to render a pass with only the caustics, from top view, looking down on the object that receives the caustics. This way I could render one simple animation of the caustics which will match with animation of the waves on my water texture, and then use it to make an animated texture which I can just put into the self-illumination slot of the material of the object that receives the caustics.
So, the end result should basically be a black render, with a white caustics where the caustics receiving object is located.
Is it possible to render a caustics-only pass? If so, how do I do this?
Any help will be greatly appreciated! It could save me days of rendertime!
Oh, btw, I'm using 3dsmax7 with MentalRay as render engine.
I'm making an animation at the moment that uses a water object with caustics. I love the look the caustics give to the water, but it is a dramatic increase on the rendertimes.
So I was thinking, maybe it would be possible to render a pass with only the caustics, from top view, looking down on the object that receives the caustics. This way I could render one simple animation of the caustics which will match with animation of the waves on my water texture, and then use it to make an animated texture which I can just put into the self-illumination slot of the material of the object that receives the caustics.
So, the end result should basically be a black render, with a white caustics where the caustics receiving object is located.
Is it possible to render a caustics-only pass? If so, how do I do this?
Any help will be greatly appreciated! It could save me days of rendertime!
Oh, btw, I'm using 3dsmax7 with MentalRay as render engine.