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Hi

Anyone got a decent water/pool displacement MXM they'd like to share? I'm struggling with keeping up with the new features...

TIA

Adri

I would love to see a nice water material for a pool - with displacement and caustics. The problem is that it is (almost) impossible to see the caustics through the water surface when using "real" water.

- One workaround is to add an AGS layer to make the caustics visible. AGS makes the bottom surface and the caustics visible without distortions, and it's no longer physically correct.

- Another method is is the one used in the pool tutorial by Nuno Faria, with two water surfaces, where one is hidden from camera. This requiers two materials - one is water and the second is AGS, and both surfaces must be displaced or modeled as a water surface.

Here is a quick test with the first method. Material is basically 10% AGS + 90% water and a displacement layer. The model is just a plain surface. It is a simple method, but as you can see, the test is not very convincing: the AGS layer makes the floor tiles and the caustics visible -but not in the right positions...

As I recently discovered there is another problem. Everyone uses lights inside the pool so there is no constant method for both cases. I mean, if you try one of the methods KurtS mentioned, that means using a water surface and not a box for the water volume, the results are totally wrong.
So, to have caustics and real looking water with emitters you have to use a box but to have caustics from the sun you have to use a surface.
Having both, that means a late afternoon summer shot, is the most difficult.