[Fernando Tella]

Lights are quite simple:

Only one emitter layer defined by Color & luminance with correlated color 5000, 2000W and efficacy 55. All the ligths are the same mesh so the power is distributed on the three lights (though they are raised in multilight to 400%).

I made 3 square holes in the wall of the pool, detached the end of the hole to make the emitter and copied this last face and normal flipped to make the water cap of the whole thing (the normal points to the emitter).

This is the water material I used:



The value displayed is the black one.

[JTB]

Thanks for the info..... So your water is a simple dielectric....
I used the standard AGS mat, but with an extra layer of 15% weight with a dielectric.... I remember this mat used for a nice pool shot in another thread.

Here is a quick test with Kerkythea.... It looks close to what I want with lower quality of course.... But the light spreads inside the water volume nice and only with 10 mins of rendering



I hope for better dielectrics for the next release

[Fernando Tella]

I will make some test to see if I can reduce the noise if I find the time.

[Fernando Tella]

This is the cheap solution (at SL14):



-This is the water material: http://www.ftella.com/links/Agua%20sin%20refraccion.mxm

Basically it's a mirror but with water Nd (1,33) plus a ghost layer in additive mode and weighted 15

-Almost clean at SL11 and perfect at SL14 (at least for me)

-No refraction effect.



Note: I 've also updated the previous test to SL 18.90

[JTB]

Looks much better, thanks a lot!
Also, thank you very much for your time!

[KurtS]

Some really interesting tests here, I would love to see the final renders!


some more reference photos: http://tinyurl.com/2pmx6x

[JCAddy]

Hrm....that looks nice and all Fernando, but to me it still looks like a plane of water on top with no depth to it and a shiny bottom reflecting the lights?

[Fernando Tella]

Well, as I said that's the cheap solution. The one in the previous page is the correct but very expensive solution (very noisy at SL18.90). I'm afraid in this case there's no in between solution unless you want to see the bottom of the pool duplicated (the refracted and the not-refracted blended together).

[JCAddy]

Ah gotcha, I guess I missed that one! sorry

[simmsimaging]

If reality isn't the big deal you could maybe adjust the pool wall material and make it a low powered emitter. The pool lining in the reference shot is significantly lighter and is giving most of the bounce light (IMO) - you could probably emulate that with a (possibly hand-adjusted) HDRI map. That would certainly give the water something more to reflect/refract and brighten that up too.

Not sure - just a thought, and I haven't tried it

b

[JTB]

A test with a new material for the water, it is a standard AGS with some textures to fake caustics and an emitter layer....
Close to what I want, not slowing down a lot.... Of course I haven't tried the final scene. I also managed to switch on/off the lights without multilight(by categories, like house1,house2,house3,pool1,pool2,pool3,wall1,wall2...) so that I don't have lights on that I don't need.
This test image is after 10h, at 1000x750, SL 18.67 with a quad core PC

[Richard]

Mate just a few un-tested ideas but I'll throw then out there!

1. A hidden MXI emitter plane just under the water illuminating down into the pool?

2. A low level MXI emitter with fake caustics as the walls of the pool???

This is not an example but this pool was created with a bumped AGS water surface and caustics mapped to the pool bottom. I wonder if that surface could be an MXI emitter????

[Richard]

Sorry just noticed brett suggested similar!!!! My bad

[Richard]

Did a quick test as Brett and myself suggested and it seems to work a treat!!!!!!

SL 8 in 8 min. Quick work around.

info:

Bottom of pool mapped with caustics and MXM with image and added MXI emitter made from caustics texture.

Water single plane AGS with bump!!!

Sky physical, HDRI would increase reflections.

[JTB]

Thank you all, but I don't see any night scenes, I have no problem with daylight renderings.... I need lights inside the pool.... (The known problem with light through dielectrics.)
So, do you find my last posted images so ugly? I think it works better than before.