Underwater Caustics

[art3mis]

Trying to figure out the best approach for creating an underwater caustics effect. Here is a tutorial using 3dmax and Mental Ray.

My primary problem is how to create the rippling "water surface" that the light travels through?

 

[jkunz07]

The ocean tools I've found work best to create a nice rippling surface

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/shelf/smallocean

 

It's possible to tune it to look like a small pool and not an ocean by doing things like taking out directionality of waves.

[art3mis]

Thanks. Haven't progressed to creating oceans sims yet so was unaware of that shelf tool.

Any idea if the wave animation can be made to seamlessly loop?

Edited August 24, 2017 by art3mis

[jkunz07]

There is an option to periodically loop over a set duration of time.

 

With that shelf tool, it's possible to create ocean surfaces without simulation.  The ocean spectrum / ocean eval SOP node combo are sidefx's implementation of the HOT plugin https://code.google.com/archive/p/houdini-ocean-toolkit/.