Creating the Light Volume
This section covers the creation of the lights volume and configuration of it's pass.
Theory
As our volumetric caustics
pass only displays volumetric light once it has begun to
interact with our sphere and cylinder we must now create a pass which shows
the
volumetric light up until it begins interaction with the sphere and cylinder.
Preparing the Pass
All the work we have to
do for this section is working with a second pass. To start off
with switch to the render menu then create a new pass by clicking
Pass->Edit->New Pass->Empty .
Now create a new partition
by selecting Pass->Partition->New. Now go to your explorer
and change it to passes. You may wish to rename this pass to Background_Pass.
Make sure you change your current pass to this one in the dropdown under pass
in the
render menu.
Now expand your background_objects_partition
and move all objects except your
caustic volumetric geometry to the new partition.
Click on the background_objects_partition
icon and change it's render visibility to hide
members.
If your scene has more lights
then just the volumetric one then create another partition
and shift those lights there.
Now select the background_lights_partition and choose Get->Property->Volumic.
Now check the boxes for
force volume shadows and transparent. Tweak all the other
settings as desired. They're left as defaults in this tutorial.
Render Options
Choose render->options
and configure your render options as desired. This time make
sure you've switched off caustics.
A test render should look something like below.
Compositing
Ok you're ready for the final step - compositing the final image.