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Do default wizard (450nm) bubbles in Maxwell cast dense shadows under the default daylight sky?

Maybe Maxwell treats it as a solid sphere? I would be curious to see the same test with a non-solid (shelled) sphere, so that Maxwell treats the inside volume of the sphere as air.

good question. those were solid.

Can a coating be considered solid? It has a specific thickness by definition. I wonder if it would behave like that in reality because of refraction...

Does it behave like that with a small emitter (which generates hard shadows)?

This is a limitation and it's not limited to sun. It will also fail when you use distant/small emitters.
But, there's a very easy workaround to overcome this limitation.

Please follow these steps:
- Activate base BSDF of the coating.
- Set ref=0, trans=254, Nd=1, Atten=999m, rough=0

That's all! The caustics will appear starting from SL2

ermm, but they dont look like soap-bubbles anymore

They are. This workaround makes absolutely zero difference in their look. You can try yourself.

OK I guess I was refering to the look of the shadow. I dont really know what a soap bubble shadow looks like, but I dont believe it looks like that.
Anyway I tried the technique, with sun it seems to work but there is persistent noise in the preview which becomes saturated noise at higher sl. It doesnt work at all with intense hdr shadows, the other images show another technique with faked shadows but at least that works in all lighting situations.

eric nixon wrote:I dont really know what a soap bubble shadow looks like, but I dont believe it looks like that.

Know
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewcou ... 744530508/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7694359@N07/1333716200/
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/bubb ... uglas.html
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/111647 ... gs/shadow/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/photoplasia/150174225/

Thanks, Ive learnt something. Also it looks like the bubble appears much more saturated when backlit, hence the saturated shadows.