Volumetric Caustics

[Michael Brennan]

I understand A:M's renderer isn't physically based but was curious about
trying to get some volumetric light cast from caustics, The first render is just
a volumetric spotlight with caustics on.. was trying to fake the second render
by duplicating the spotlight and just aiming it back at the first light source,
though weird things start to happen to the existing caustics... anyway ended up
faking the second effect in Photoshop... but something worth experimenting more with
in the future.

 

 

[Michael Brennan]

Got something working... the caustics weren't working when adding the second light
so used just the Radiosity without caustics to get a similar effect, rendered the caustic and used it
as a projection texture from the caustic light shooting up.

[robcat2075]

that is a peculiar effect, but a good solution.

I'm wondering... if the caustic HAD to be captured in A:M maybe some sort of multi-pass technique  with a plane moving between the lens and the focal point to render cross sections of the beam. But it would still require compositing... 

[Michael Brennan]

2 hours ago, robcat2075 said:

that is a peculiar effect, but a good solution.

I'm wondering... if the caustic HAD to be captured in A:M maybe some sort of multi-pass technique  with a plane moving between the lens and the focal point to render cross sections of the beam. But it would still require compositing... 

That would be interesting to see the result!

An example of volumetric caustics from another renderer, the light beam tends to bend in, was thinking
maybe even modeling the light beam and rigging it to point at the light target might work.