LogInBlender-made underwater caustics can now be as appealing as ever before.
Olivier Maury has announced that Blender 3.2 Alpha has received a new update that adds support for selective rendering of caustics in shadows of refractive objects. Example uses are rendering of underwater caustics and eye caustics.
The feature is based on Manifold Next Event Estimation, a method developed for production rendering. The idea is to selectively enable shadow caustics on a few objects in the scene where they have a big visual impact, without impacting render performance for the rest of the scene.
As for right now, the feature has some limitations, mainly:
- Only caustics in shadows of refractive objects work, which means no caustics from reflection or caustics that outside shadows. Only up to 4 refractive caustic bounces are supported.
- Caustic caster objects should have smooth normals.
- No support for Metal GPU rendering.
"In the future, this method may be extended for more general caustics," comments Olivier.
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