Blender 3.2 Shadow Caustics & how to get raytraced caustics

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

0:34 Caustics are produced by curved reflective or refractive surfaces, where all the energy of a light beam of nonzero area gets focused down to a line or a point (close to zero area). A lens, for example. You know how you can focus sunlight to a point with a lens and make a spot so hot it burns? That’s why it’s called “caustic”.

[@mrm3llow25]

oh my goodness........ i watched this and literally every video on blender caustics that i could find, and just couldn't get it to work. Until i looked at the light settings in cycles instead of eevee. got it. good stuff btw!!!

[@TheKenetics]

Awesome explanation! I've seen other videos before about Blender's clamping system, but this is the first time that it actually clicked with me. The comparison pictures really help. Thanks!

[@abhishekprabhu2086]

Hey thank you for this. Please make a similar in depth video on subsurface scattering, bump and displacement as well. It will help a lot. Thanks again for this

[@christopher3d475]

I'll sure look at doing those, thanks for the suggestions.

[@jcsfx710]

Thank you for such a well explained tutorial about caustics.. I've been searching for something like this for a while.

[@kiwirooms7971]

after hours one day thanks to your wonderful video i was able to activate them thank you now i can complete my biggest project

[@blender_3d]

Sir your channel is really underrated. Thanks. Best video about caustics!

[@KennyPhases]

Extremely helpful. THANK YOU. Although Blender keeps crashing.

[@vit.c.195]

Keeps crashing? Maybe you still using Windows?

[@KennyPhases]

@@vit.c.195 I am, i just cant use GPU, but my friend says it's possible to use the GPU! Ugh so frustrating how long these render times are!

[@xanzuls]

@@vit.c.195 Most people who use Blender use windows

[@vit.c.195]

@@xanzuls Not my problem... on LInux it's works rapidly fast stable and with full support RTX or even Readeon.

[@Jonah_Anthony]

wow dude, love finding small channels like this! Great tutorial, thank you!

[@Jonah_Anthony]

also is your mac running the new m1 chip? I can't believe how fast these previews are

[@christopher3d475]

I'm running both an i9 laptop with AMD GPU and an M1 Mini. I'm hoping to upgrade to an M1 Pro or M1 Max soon.

[@gadwal]

keep up the good work sir. they're gonna come.

[@abdelkarimkeraressi1418]

thnx amazing video man. i try them before looking to this video ^^ . thnx dude.

[@joaomouzaco5224]

Great explanation. Tanks for your beatiful tutorials.

[@christopher3d475]

You're very welcome. I'm working on a new one right now.

[@justin7649]

Great video! Very much appreciated!

[@northwind6199]

What a spectacularly useful video. I've been looking into other renderers to achieve this while cycles could do it natively all along, lol. :D I have a question: If i make a dispersion shader -say a prism - will the colourful light also affect the caustics?

[@christopher3d475]

I certainly wish Blender had a more sophisticated sampling system that made caustics more feasible, but at least for some things like my diamond rings, it works well enough. I'll have to check into the prism.

[@northwind6199]

@@christopher3d475 Thank you, appreciate it! :D

[@JorgeBurrezo]

I don't know if I've missed something, can't it be done only in shadows? How is it possible for a metal to emit caustics in Blander? Edit: in the video you explain all 🤓

[@essentialelephant8850]

Holy smokes! Is this the Chris Tyler that taught all the strata 3D stuff?!?

[@christopher3d475]

It is, yes.

[@essentialelephant8850]

@@christopher3d475 WOW!! I used to watch ALL of your Strata videos, they were gold!! But of course I then found Blender. Please tell me your are on Twitter?!?! Amazing to see you here, I hope you are focusing on Blender, we need you!!

[@inoyashakitbu1178]

Blender on Mac still has gpu support on Mx with the silicon version

[@robertasgustas4129]

Thanks😁 Maybe you can do something about same topic in EEvee?

[@christopher3d475]

You know I haven't really explored Eevee, my interests have primarily been with full raytracers.

[@MudraptorGaming]

What happens if I have both on? the approximate caustics AND the true caustics? Does it work with actual volumes, or just the "fake" ones like the glass shader?

[@christopher3d475]

they're independent mechanisms and should work together.

[@quyenquyennguyen3896]

I don't know what I did ưởng but my caustic only shows in the preview and not on render even with this tutorial

[@Deezsirrer]

Sound like a job for viewlayer to reduce the samples

[@innerc8951]

After 10 minutes of rendering… Mac user using cpu rendering: “How do we reduce noise?!!!” Me and my 4090 using Optix GPU rendering with 16000 samples: “What are you talking about? Where’s the noise?”

[@foreign_objective2855]

Is it possible for you to upload a downloadable .blend file for this? Not sure if it's me or the program itself not working but I followed the video and I still can't get it to work.

[@pr0hobo]

I have a gem and i cant get it to cast caustics unless i use the smooth shading option but when i do it smooths all my facets and makes the gem look like jelo, clearly there is a way to have objects with sharp edges cast caustics i just dont know what it is.

[@christopher3d475]

When you enable Smooth shading, try setting the shading angle to zero.

[@manuelhofmann1950]

i do not see shadow caustics in light properties. tested in blender 3.2 and 3.3. i'm on windows and tried both cpu and gpu mode. any idea?

[@IvorryVagner]

I am in blender 3.2 and it isnt work for me=/

[@abuaysam6459]

I just download blender 3.2 but caustics option it doesn't show in lights property !

[@christopher3d475]

Are you using it in GPU mode on the Mac? It only works in CPU mode in Cycles on the Mac.

[@lisarauch2339]

@@christopher3d475 THANK YOU SO MUCH, I searched so long to find this solution!!!

[@melbendigo]

Thank you for this video! I followed it, but I'm still not getting any caustics. I have a goblet object and when I click to enable caustics, the shadows are still flat. Cycles is enabled and caustics is enabled for the glass and the floor. I'm in a new install of 3.2, this is the first thing I've done, so I'm in default settings. Any guesses. anyone? Thanks! UPDATE: I didn't have Shade Smooth enable for the glass. Shade Smooth has to be enabled. It works now!

[@christopher3d475]

Is this for shadow caustics or the tradition raytraced form?

[@melbendigo]

@@christopher3d475 For shadow caustics.

[@christopher3d475]

@@melbendigo They only work in CPU mode, if you switch to GPU, those options become hidden.

[@melbendigo]

@@christopher3d475 Thank you, Chistopher. I'm in CPU mode and have the options, but no visible caustics.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

6:32 No curvature, no focusing, so no actual caustics.

[@rowlandmartin85]

Last I checked Caustic only works in cycles.

[@christopher3d475]

Yes, it's something that properly requires full raytracing.

[@G1NJO]

i followed all the setps, but the caustics dont show up

[@christopher3d475]

Shadow caustics? Are you in GPU mode?

[@G1NJO]

@@christopher3d475 yes sir

[@G1NJO]

@@christopher3d475 i downloaded the offical 3.2 version

[@G1NJO]

well now it works with a glass obj. but it doesnt work for default cube with glass shader

[@christopher3d475]

@@G1NJO At least on the Mac, it doesn't work in GPU mode.

[@CamSpaghett]

Idk why I can’t understand this. Am I dumb or something?

[@SmellsMonochrome]

0:19 your accent stones have flipped normals

[@SmellsMonochrome]

If this was modelled in Rhino or a plugin for it, it has an issue with flipping normals on mirrored block instances.

[@christopher3d475]

Yes, I realized and fixed that after I had done the renderings.

[@mlgmemes]

The caustic are not realistic enough because its not colored

[@christopher3d475]

They are in 3.4. Watch my video on Path Guiding.