Underwater Dock lighting

#21

I’m with Patrick on this one. I’d only use photons, caustics, and GI if you absolutely have to. Not that they don’t rock, but they’re a bit unmanagable compared to straight FG. You’ll take a slight performance hit (slower renders) but they’ll be much more predictable. I tend to save GI for projects when I have some extra time to play with 'em. There’s nothing physically accurate or intuitive about photons in mental ray, especially for Maya. It becomes guesswork.

You can generally take it 95% of the way with just FG alone. Some people use Importons and IP, but I don’t yet. If you want to try those methods (which are even newer and less supported than FG) there’s plenty of awesome renders, results, and threads around that deal with those, but I’ve never seen anyone use Importons or IP with the parti_volume shader yet.

#22

tbh you dont even need fg if you add the bounce and fill lights your self but fb might look nice for subtle bounce. the ambient and form can come from the mia shader(ao) the rest with lights if you go this way u can use very low fg settings and let the shader do most of the work. for cautics just render out a image sequence from a caustic generater plugin (free online or maybe tinderbox?) and use it as a gobo in a light. if you want to have different textures for the under water bit different colors/grim etc. just use the rayswitcher in the diffuse and then in the refraction part of the rayswither add in the different texture maps. rendering/lighting isnt all about physically correct an raytracing.your render times will be much less and you will have more control if you keep to simpler old school methods,cheats and hacks :wink: hope this helps :slight_smile:

hey InfernalDarkness
i like your volume renders they look cool. i have never used that shader but looks like u can get some nice results.

#23

Thanks guys!, GI and FG were killing me, these new ideas will make this much easier. I’m going to read up and rebuild my scene.
Cheers!

#24

hey InfernalDarkness
i like your volume renders they look cool. i have never used that shader but looks like u can get some nice results.

They’re just quick tests to help out our buddy here. Nothing special - that’s the only volumetric lighting shader there is for mental ray currently, the parti_volume shader. If you’re using mental ray, you’re stuck with it.

#25

Update:

Heres what we were getting with parti_volume setup:

That took 4 hours and 44mins^^

Removed the parti_volume and turned on FG and got this:

That took about 20mins^^

Water isn’t working. I have set a transparency and translucent-ness yet its still not transparent. Glow is obviously too blown out. I haven’t applied any lights in the pool yet, just have an ambient cyan color and with FG on, its emitting light, sort of. I’m lost as to how make a believable water.

#26

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