Pool water shine / gloss doesn't seem right after applying caustics

[triumfdula2]

Pool water shine / gloss doesn’t seem right after applying caustics, what am I missing, or is this how it should be ?

SETTINGS (Photon Mapped Caustics)

1. Multiplier 1
2. Search Distance 5
3. Max Photons 60

HDRI (Caustic Photons)

1. Caustic Subdivs 1000
2. Target Radius 500
3. Emit Distance 150

I also tried Water Reflection IOR more then 1.6, it doesn’t change anything

[DaveR]

What renderer?

[triumfdula2]

VRay 2021

[DaveR]

Moved to the Vray category.

It would help if you’d put that information in your initial post.

Are you still using SketchUp 2019 as your profile says?

[Imran3512]

What is the settings on the water itself?

[Elmtec-Adam]

You won’t be able to rely on the HDRI if you are wanting caustics. Turn on the sun.

For a pool, I probably wouldn’t bother, the render time increases so much it is probably not worth it - look at applying a caustic texture to the surfaces below the water .

[triumfdula2]

No I’m not using 2019, I have 2021

[triumfdula2]

IOR at Reflection 1.6
IOR at Refraction 1.3
Fog Color (slightly blue)
Fog Multipliter 0.1

Affect Shadows at Refraction turned off
Bump Map 0.1 (Using VRay Noise A)

[triumfdula2]

The Sun changes me the light while caustic texture, that is not something I would do, ureasonalbe and unrealistic technically

[Imran3512]

But whats the reflection colour? Like the reflection map

[Elmtec-Adam]

There are several different types of caustic effects that you can use, for the pool/water type effect you’ll need to have water shaped geometry - apply displacement to the water surface.
You can increase the sharpness of the caustics by reducing the pixel search distance.

[triumfdula2]

Reflection color is white, almost,

I don’t know what do you mean by reflection map, i don’t have any map on the reflections

[triumfdula2]

Ok but the problem are not the caustics, the problem is that there seems like no shine or glossiness on the water even that there is reflection, probably this is how it should be, I don’t know

[Imran3512]

Ok make sure you uncheck fresnel or check fresnel then it should start reflecting the sky more. Or change the hdri map to somethingnwith more clouds

[Elmtec-Adam]

If you can share the model we can take a look

[triumfdula2]

63a.skp (5.8 MB)

you can update hdri from polyhaven

[eric-s]

Here’s my 2cents…you can play around with caustics, bump, IOR, for hours and still perhaps not get it right.
Here it is currently:

Here is the ‘Waves’ material provided within Chaos Cosmos:

You can try adjusting the scale of the waves if desired:

Finally, with some clouds for reflection (I did not go and download the HDRI):

The end result is likely subjective and needs to be balanced with the amount of time committed. Hope this helps.

[triumfdula2]

Ok thanks a lot, i did not think about this, i will use a ready wave material, seems much better

anyway i will check the wave settings that I was missing,

[triumfdula2]

I don’t know what do you mean water - water - water pool light ?

[eric-s]

They’re saying that SU’s native pool water material has V-Ray attributes that can be seen when rendered. Can’t say this is a better option than the Cosmos material but at least you know you have other options.