Rendering an underwater scene - with depth fall off and surface caustics

Question

I've been working on an underwater scene for a project and now reached a standstill due to an issue that I encountered. I'm trying to render a scene such as the ones in the images below, I tried using the different volume shaders available on blender but can't figure out the best combination to achieve such a look. The god ray (kinda) lights along with the depth fall off is what I aim to achieve.

best, AJ

Pictuurres from: Pexel

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/271249/how-to-make-disco-ball-reflect-lights-on-walls-using-new-shadow-caustics-from-3/ https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/129220/how-to-create-an-underwater-scene-in-cycles/ — Duarte Farrajota Ramos, Sep 29 '22 at 10:16

moonboots · Answer 1 · 2022-09-29T10:24:32.003

1

You could try these technics:

Create a cube that contains your scene, give it a material with the following setup: Plug a Noise Texture, 2D mode, into a ColorRamp that you plug into the Density of the Volume Scatter, tweak a bit the rotation values of the Mapping node. It will fake the ray lights. Put a Sun above the cube. To make it more interesting you could mix the ColorRamp with another Noise (in 3D this time):

Or create a classical Volume Scatter setup and put several Spot lights to create the rays:

To create a gradient on Z, mix your setup with a Separate XYZ through a Color > MixRGB in Multiply mode:

edited Sep 29 '22 at 10:24

answered Sep 29 '22 at 10:13

moonboots

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Hey! Thanks for the reply, I'll try to do that. Do you think adding a light path node would help get the same results? – Jassim Sep 29 '22 at 10:48
How would you use it? – moonboots Sep 29 '22 at 10:50

Rendering an underwater scene - with depth fall off and surface caustics

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