Noroff fagskole: LR4 - Lighting and rendering an underwater scene

This week at Noroff, I am making a small underwater environment for the white marlin with volumetric lights, volumetric fog and fake caustics. Then I will be rendering it with Vray.

Time-budget

Idea development

This is my mood-board. Nothing really idealistic to show off, considering these light sources are a part of the assignment. Not really sure if I even needed a mood board, but I guess it doesn't matter.

Anyway, the top left picture shows the type of caustics I'm going for. Underneath that, you can see some "god rays", basically rays of light shining through the water. It's more or less a source of inspiration.

Work

Here I had created the entire scene. The brown ground is the seabed. The blue wall is the background, basically giving the illusion of water. Otherwise, there are three lights, one shot-cam, some rocks, a bit of grass, and of course the white marlin.

Something you can't directly see (because I forgot to highlight it), is the Fogbox. The fogbox is a simple rectangular box covering the scene, it contains the "VrayEnviromentFog1", which gives the effect of fog.

You can see all of my objects, lights etc. in the outliner (The picture underneath to the left)

On the right, you can see some of the settings I used for the different lights and the fog.

This is the picture file I used for the caustics light.

Finished Product

I'm not entirely sure if I like the result or not. There are some things I could have done better.

I could have added more objects in the scene, like more rocks or grass, but at the same time I felt like that would take the focus away from the fish.

I ended up having to use the caustic picture file for the god-rays, because all my other attempts left me with nasty shadows on the seabed and the fish itself. And as you probably can see, the caustics from the god-rays are not really matched with the caustics from the caustics light. This is because I wanted the caustics to be smaller, but that was not able to happen to the caustics from the god-rays.

Other than that, I like the rays, I like the lighting, and I think the environment is okay. If I could simply break the light links between the god-rays and the seabed, but still get the rays, that would be really cool. But as I have understood from forums, making an underwater scene with Vray isn't that easy.

Render settings:

Vray

1920x1080

GI (on)