Experiencing with Caustics

"In optics, a caustic or caustic network  is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface. The caustic is a curve or surface to which each of the light rays is tangent, defining a boundary of an envelope of rays as a curve of concentrated light."

This project was realised in 3ds Max 2012 and rendered using Mental Ray rendering engine.

For lighting: the scene was lit using a free light and Ray Traced Shadows were enabled in the light’s parameters.

For texturing: I used raytrace material with transparency (white color). I also applied noise material on Bump.

I wanted certain objects to generate caustics: to do that, I activated the “caustics generator” in “Object properties”

For rendering: I enabled Caustics and Global Illumination in the Indirect Illumination parameters. I adjusted some parameters, for example the “caustic multiplier”. I increased it to enhance the caustics’ illumination.

The original scene was created by Evermotion