Volumetric Studies: Caustics, Godrays, Murky Water, Mist

[bdesign]

Holy moly! These results are really impressive. #mousedrop

Thank you, Will! I really appreciate the kind words! (Do I owe you a new mouse?  )

Cheers,
Eric

[Will Gibbons]

Holy moly! These results are really impressive. #mousedrop

Thank you, Will! I really appreciate the kind words! (Do I owe you a new mouse?  )

Cheers,
Eric

Nah, I'm covered! lol.

[Hossein Alfideh]

Hi Eric,
man, I can't say how Impressed I am when I saw this thread!
this is super nice!
thanks to you I can use volumetric mist in my upcoming projects!
Thanks again for sharing this dude!

cheers

[bdesign]

Holy moly! These results are really impressive. #mousedrop

Thank you, Will! I really appreciate the kind words! (Do I owe you a new mouse?  )

Cheers,
Eric

Nah, I'm covered! lol.

cool

[bdesign]

Hi Eric,
man, I can't say how Impressed I am when I saw this thread!
this is super nice!
thanks to you I can use volumetric mist in my upcoming projects!
Thanks again for sharing this dude!

cheers

Hey Hossein-
Thanks very much, man! I actually thought of you and your "Into the Wild" series when I posted this  Look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Cheers,
Eric

[Hossein Alfideh]

Hi Eric,
man, I can't say how Impressed I am when I saw this thread!
this is super nice!
thanks to you I can use volumetric mist in my upcoming projects!
Thanks again for sharing this dude!

cheers

Hey Hossein-
Thanks very much, man! I actually thought of you and your "Into the Wild" series when I posted this  Look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Cheers,
Eric

Thanks man! 
can't wait to try it myself!

[DMerz III]

Wow, Eric, you already know, I am a huge fan, but this! This is just incredible, I don't know how you come up with it, but I am glad you do and are kind enough to share with the rest of us. Thanks again

[bdesign]

Wow, Eric, you already know, I am a huge fan, but this! This is just incredible, I don't know how you come up with it, but I am glad you do and are kind enough to share with the rest of us. Thanks again

Thanks very much for your incredibly kind and humbling comment, David! You're quite welcome...happy to share Good to hear from you, man.

Cheers,
Eric

[Esben Oxholm]

Wow, I kinda see how it works, but I'm baffled how you managede to come up with this method in the first place?
I'm surprised that the results looks so good!

[NM-92]

Hey Eric, i tried this method on my latest scene (the arcade machine). I have a doubt. Where should i position the animation cursor ? Should i pause the animation at 1 second ? more? less? I see that shifting these values the results are different, but i don't know the correct way to do it. I love your test images btw.

[bdesign]

Wow, I kinda see how it works, but I'm baffled how you managede to come up with this method in the first place?
I'm surprised that the results looks so good!

Hey Esben-

Thanks. I'm not sure what you mean by "I kinda see how it works"(?) Did you try it out and not get the desired effect? If you have any questions, let me know.

Cheers,
Eric

[bdesign]

Hey Eric, i tried this method on my latest scene (the arcade machine). I have a doubt. Where should i position the animation cursor ? Should i pause the animation at 1 second ? more? less? I see that shifting these values the results are different, but i don't know the correct way to do it. I love your test images btw.

Hey Nico-

Leave the animation cursor in the timeline at the start. You don't even need to hit the play button, just enable motion blur, and the fog will start to build up in "slices" in the realtime viewport. Make sure that the duration of each fog plane animation is 1 second, and that FPS is set to 1. When you try to type "1" in the FPS box, KeyShot will probably default it to "12", so you'll need to highlight the "2" with your mouse cursor and hit backspace to get a value of "1" in the box. When rendering with the animation dialouge window, just make sure motion blur is enabled in the timeline, and render as a still image. Use max samples with a high value to ensure the fog becomes smooth. Did you download the KSP tutorial file I provided? Let me know if you have more questions.

Cheers,
Eric

[NM-92]

Oh no ! I totally missed that link. I'm taking a look at the file right now, sorry. Everything understood, thanks for the explanation, it was very clear. I don't think my PC can handle the fog in the arcade scene though. Your file is taking a while to build the mist and it's a simple sphere.

[bdesign]

Oh no ! I totally missed that link. I'm taking a look at the file right now, sorry. Everything understood, thanks for the explanation, it was very clear. I don't think my PC can handle the fog in the arcade scene though. Your file is taking a while to build the mist and it's a simple sphere.

Except for the caustics scene, I rendered the volume fog in a separate pass and composited in Photoshop with a combination of lighten and screen blend modes. Much faster to render the fog separately. In the tutorial KSP, you'll see a scene set titled "fog pass". All geometry except for the fog planes has a flat black material applied, like the Godrays fog pass example render in my original post. A separate fog pass also gives you a lot of flexibility in the overall look of the fog when compositing. When I saw your arcade image, I actually thought it would be a cool scene to try the volumetrics. Let me know how it comes along and if you have more questions.

Cheers,
Eric

[NM-92]

Oh i see. The separate fog pass is a nice idea. I'll check all this out. Thanks for the patience Eric.