Fake Caustics with Geometry Nodes! Blender 3.1 Tutorial (Eeevee)

[@MysteryPancake]

Please note at 2:17 it is easier to use the Scene Time input than using #frame/100 Project files: mysterypancake.gumroad.com/

[@BoDodge]

The non genius types in the back of the class thought you were moving at a pretty good clip.

[@Lubawaandme]

it may not work in blender 3.3. i used "frame" w/o # instead.

[@fefchanskiy4696]

Everybody talkin' bout how god the tutorial is, not mentioning how this person literally flattened his WebCam so that we could see more of the UI

[@MysteryPancake]

haha nah i just hate my webcam lol

[@fefchanskiy4696]

@@MysteryPancake You could really play with your webcam tho. i think people would love the humor based on it. never the less, cool vid

[@rousseau3707]

BRO YOUR WEBCAM LMAO, thats the hardes ive laguhed in a while watching a blender tut

[@reinhardniedermeier5826]

it's becoming more and more promising to be a blender artist.

[@andreybagrichuk5365]

Thank you a lot for content, mate. And for free caustics files!

[@BroSender]

This video is a miracle for me bro

[@IrvanQadri]

I like how your neck respect the blender version you're using, super nice explanation thou!

[@davidmcsween]

I started to watch and was like... yeah but Cycles is so slow... then BANG! its in Eevee. OMG!! Thank you so much. I really liked your delivery and clarity. I can't believe you covered so much ground. Bravo

[@Mateusz143]

Color, color color color, color? Color color

[@MysteryPancake]

color

[@diegopadovani4942]

The animation work at the beginning is also mind blowing! Nice work!

[@NikiCPK_P]

I had to rewatch your tutorial because I was more interested in your wide face. But great tutorial!

[@brettwilkin1161]

The older I get the more humbled I am, absolutely awesome!

[@infintiyward]

This is the coolest thing i've seen all year. absolutely mind blowing

[@sshr5182]

As a beginner in blender this is like rocket science. all i learned from this is that you are really smart

[@MysteryPancake]

sorry, it's a bit of a mess of a video lol

[@kedibeq]

thank you

[@mmcsarte]

The video is already amazing in the first minute for the amazing caustic graphic/explanation, so well thought

[@tobberh]

Fantastic use of geometry nodes!!! Love it! :)

[@dialectricStudios]

wow! gonna get some serious mileage out of this one. creative asf

[@tiagogiraovideos]

amazing tut. super well explained. loved it

[@deepeshsubhash7915]

😮 Awesome🎉

[@30Salt]

First step into geometry nodes. Appreciate the file download!

[@StaleCookies]

How anyone has the patience to undertake learning geometry nodes is beyond me

[@MysteryPancake]

brain damage

Woaw, great video !!! And if you want fake caustic using a gobo, this setup work very well to make a gobo too !!! Thx

[@recurveninja]

This is insane, well done.

[@Lance_G]

Stunning is an understatement! ✨

[@GaryParris]

Excellent example, love blender and its community

[@khalatelomara]

That's mind blowing

[@donflamingo795]

My mind is blown away.

[@alexmassy]

Brilliant ! Instant subscribe ! Thx

[@21EC]

You came up with all of this idea on your own...?! if so you must be a genius, that's really complex, barely understood anything you explained, it's so amazing, mind blown.

[@MysteryPancake]

aw thanks! though I can't take credit, it was Evan Wallace's idea

[@21EC]

@@MysteryPancake Still tho, it's hard to recall and understand each step of the process.

[@blueskysimpson]

Fantastic! I got spelling case wrong on naming light_area and put extra time on debugging. It's worthy it. Many many thanks for the tutoring.

[@hugoantunesartwithblender]

what a amazing tutorial!

[@rickfunny]

Quality stuff as always man 👏

[@mach1nka420]

This is absolutely genius

[@Xraller]

WOW! Very good tutorial. Subscribed!

[@monsoonsheep]

Yo this is awesome! Thank you!!

[@danielhernandez2561]

amazing! nice work! *subscribes instantly*

[@totheknee]

The reveal at 11:29 - 😳🤤😱

[@songslkjhlkjhlkjhlkj]

AMAZING! Thank you very much.

[@DigitalNeutrinos]

DUDE!! ,nice

[@DiegoFavre]

es increible la cantidad de cosas que no se... exelente!

[@hercules5843]

just one word : "dayum"!!!!

[@joelsanjay922]

Thanks man! beautiful work

[@Smittel]

the facecam is the best part lol

[@8sat_]

to fully fix the cycles merging issue I used a random value (vector) and increased the max z a bit. worked for me edit: it doesn't fully fix it, but it is better

[@wilsimarbr]

wow amazing.. thks

[@atallahahmed9983]

brilliant

[@sndosc]

this is Amazing!

[@DaddyMouse]

This kind of fake caustics should be included in eevee by default IMO

[@rudypieplenbosch6752]

Wow, you even got color separation going

[@alamogordo280]

great! I don't have the patience to work with geometric nodes my friend

[@sndosc]

I hope to see more blender content :)

[@DanielZanSalazar]

I wasn't planning to feel like a total noob today but here we are...

[@calebwait510]

SQUISHY HEAD

[@muhammadfarooqi]

it was longer.. but didn't make me feel any bored..

[@planetslime]

If anyone is having trouble getting the waves to animate using #frame/100 try getting rid of the # hashtag. Solved the problem for me!

[@Lubawaandme]

GREAT WORK

[@Novia5555]

nice explanations 👍🏻👍🏻

[@bonecoseoutrascoisas-leiri1131]

Amazing! Thank you!

[@afrosymphony8207]

if its ok i'll just copy your nd use your nodes, i finished this entire glorious video but still didnt understand shit cause i'm dumb as a rock 😀. one of my all time fave blender tutorials btw, i have alot of ideas i wanna try with this

[@aarons.8566]

"If this idiot says color one more time I'm going to commit arson" lollllllllllll

[@danil9843]

Subscribed

[@Toda_Ciencia]

So good as the Blender 3.2 shadow caustics! Edit: it is actually better!

[@Toda_Ciencia]

It is better because 1. Works in Eevee 2. Is not limited at the shadow space

[@Wenedi]

why is the face cam squashed in the corner :D

[@SpicyMelonYT]

BRUH I DIDNT REALIZE YOUR FACE WAS IN THE BOTTOM RIGHT HAHAHA

[@rewdonaghy1305]

Just seen you! Lol

[@dan_karro8904]

EEEVEE ? It's EEVEE - extra easy virtual environment engine.

[@sreliata]

Absolutely fantastic!!! I .. am speechless. One question I have is, what if you want other lights in your scene? Say, you're making an underwater scene and want to make an underwater scene, where there's additional glowing objects flowing underwater. How would you implement other light, that actually is having emission (lighting the scene) into this? I tried- and simply adding other lights (Sun, point, anything) just seems as if they're non existent, despite being right there ._.

[@MysteryPancake]

It is unusual if lights don't affect the scene at all, is this in Cycles or Eevee? Normally the shader would add the caustic color on top of the scene's existing lighting like with an "add" blend mode, so if the scene had a red background for example it would add the caustic onto the red. I am not sure if this is what you mean, or do you mean to affect the actual caustic color using other lights?

[@sreliata]

@@MysteryPancake specifically, I added a point light afterwards, wanting to light the scene a little bit more but it had no effect whatsoever. I then opened a new blend file and appended the materials from the caustic one, to recreate the effect of 'underwater' .. but it didn't accept any of the lights (sun) in the scene either. I wonder if there is something I am missing in regards to geometry nodes.

[@MysteryPancake]

​@@sreliatathis is quite strange. I have only had a similar issue in Cycles like at 14:25 due to light path rendering, but not in Eevee. If you have a Discord account I could add you and try to find the issue, but I am not sure what would cause this at the moment.

[@weltraumimport]

I DIDNT EVEN NOTICE THE SQUASHED FACECAM

[@heljoshinmax9459]

It was really awesome!!:) Can you please make a noob tutorial for nodes raycast and face area?:)

[@MysteryPancake]

Erindale has a good video on Raycast: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kHSmgoulf9R8gZY Face Area measures the size of each face and returns it. It is a simple node so may not need a tutorial.

[@ZociIndia]

hi Evan, I have an old black and white image of my grandparents i want cast a glass which projects caustic image of my them. So, is there any possibility that this tool blender provides some sort of reverse engineered thing from 2d to 3d.

[@MysteryPancake]

You could try using a grid with many points, and setting the position of each point to the brightness of the image at that pixel. It can be done with Image Texture and Set Position nodes in Geometry nodes. Blender now has a caustic renderer in Cycles you could also try

[@ecospline]

Superb tutorial - is there any way to loop the wave animation ? I knot how to do it in the shader editor ( by rotating vector) but in node editor...I can't figure it out (I'm noob)

[@MysteryPancake]

You'd have to loop the fractal noise, there are some tutorials online about it if you search for looping noise

[@engelbrecht777]

Beginner in Blender... i am stuck already at 1:00 hahaha.... extrude the edge... can't do the outward extrution. It just extrudes up. Tried to find some tutorials about extrude, but i am still stuck. Expanding the edges outwards... hehe, so simple but impossible for me. I needed to go to C4D to do it and import the damn pool into Blender. Maybe i will figure it out one day. Help? Yes i did the rest of your nice tutorial so thanks for this.

[@MysteryPancake]

The outward extrusion isn't needed (I should have cut it from the video), but I pressed E, then clicked to confirm, then pressed S to scale it

[@engelbrecht777]

@@MysteryPancake Yeah, i am in a much better place now after a week of tutorials. I think Blender will completely take over all my projects and jobs soon. Thanks to all you great tutorial makers.

[@slimeball3209]

why blender team just dont rewrited entire cycles render to polygon reprojection? and blender will have refraction and reflection caustics like its normal. i dont like idea of rays casting from the camera in random way.

[@MysteryPancake]

I guess the method Blender uses must be more accurate, though I wonder too

[@slimeball3209]

@@MysteryPancake i think is have equal accuracy, you cant cast many rays to polygon and take a reflection or cast 3 rays and project this polygon to surface on the way. problems appearing if we will use normal maps, but even this is solvable. maybe it's just becouse of history of computer graphics research.

[@M4Pxls]

Does it works also for reflection caustics?

[@MysteryPancake]

Sadly no. Though Cycles has built-in caustics now so this method isn't really needed anymore

[@impliqued1910]

Blender 6.7 here, i'm trying this out and the light just doesnt show in cycles ^^;, theres not settings for alpha blend so i'm a little confused haha

[@impliqued1910]

Its fine i probably missed something since the scene you gave seems so work, tho it doesnt really fit the rest of my scene so i'll probably do something else

[@MysteryPancake]

The technique is mostly useful for Eevee, as only Eevee has alpha blend. Cycles has proper caustic rendering now so it may be better to use that

[@impliqued1910]

Yeah i feel like i should experiment more, but at the same time i can never manage to get what i want just right ^^;

[@Toda_Ciencia]

It is possible to make fake reflective caustics?

[@MysteryPancake]

Vector Math has a Reflect mode to get the direction for reflection (similar to the Refract mode)

[@Toda_Ciencia]

@@MysteryPancake Please make a video showing how to do it (i have no idea of how i can do it)

[@sophiakluck1041]

Every time i change the scale of the noise texture in the water surface node group , the main node tree suddenly starts ignoring the suns rotation :( Has anyone had the same problem and was able to fix it?

[@hugoattia6159]

hi ! thank you again for that fantastic trick. Even after capturing the attribute and plugged in the normal node too it, i didn't managed to get rid of all the edges bugging 6/54... could you help me please !!! The object is a complex one but it is flat, and every node is rightly plugged (i triple checked), and the light effect is working but the view is obstructed with those black edges :///

[@MysteryPancake]

The normal might not be random enough to stop all overlapping faces. It can work better to use a more random node like a noise texture, or the index input multiplied by a small number. Though Blender now has proper caustic simulation, so this method is not really needed for Cycles anymore.

[@jicman8763]

is there a way to use this set up to create fake color dispersion for gem facets?

[@MysteryPancake]

It depends how it looks when the mesh is replaced with a gem like at 12:35, it wouldn't be physically correct but it might look cool I saw someone on /r/blender made a shader which works for the internal refraction of gems: www.reddit.com/r/blender/comments/rfgiwq/physically_accurate_diamond_light_dispersion_with/ They posted the setup in the comments

[@flex4285]

what is goin on with your facecam. its so distorted xD

[@sobreaver]

Fake is the new real o0 Fake it till u make it ;)

[@Novia5555]

Btw, why when I add another object it doesn't receive light? it receive maybe if i scale up the scale from raycast to set position node but then the light dissapear from the pool. Do you know how ti fix it?

[@MysteryPancake]

It may need to be in the Receivers collection, if it is the light model may need to be larger or rotated so it goes in the right direction

[@nightfox7333]

hey, I have set it up and when I change the inside IOR it does nothing :/

[@nightfox7333]

nevermind fixed it

[@MysteryPancake]

Strange, I'm not sure why it could be. You could hardcode two values into the Divide math node, or use the project file as reference

[@nightfox7333]

@@MysteryPancake I found out I put the wrong geometry in the join geometry node

[@wellestablishednonsense6723]

How do you get the "not" node??

[@MysteryPancake]

It is a setting on the Boolean Math node

[@cg.man_aka_kevin]

Can Blender 3.1 stable work?

[@MysteryPancake]

The current Blender release is fine now 3.1 is out

[@cg.man_aka_kevin]

@@MysteryPancake Ok...

[@carlmarcs3647]

tried this step by step but it still didn't work. peeved.

[@MysteryPancake]

aw rip :( u can get the project file for free if u want to use it

[@carlmarcs3647]

@@MysteryPancake thanks, i bought it for $5 :p

[@MysteryPancake]

@@carlmarcs3647 ty! u don't need to pay tho haha

[@carlmarcs3647]

@@MysteryPancake least i could do!

[@RemeslovCorporation]

Ну ты псих