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Underwater Caustics effect..

I am trying to recreate the effect of underwater caustics in Photoshop.. ie. if you were under the water of a pool, and there was a light coming from above, there would be "strands" of light on the bottom of the pool. I know that there are 3d programs out there that can do this but I just want a nice water effect..

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Let's see the reference images you are using...

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Nick
Pixel-Infinity

sure..
There is a picture in this pdf
http://www.shivasite.com/tables/truespace/tutorial/competant/underwater.pdf

on the sixth page I think..I have attached it and it is also on my website here:
http://zeux.sudog.com/pics/caustics.jpg

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ok good, and the image you are applying the light effect to..

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Nick
Pixel-Infinity

it's just going to be a simple background. Plain blue. or maybe a gradient.. either way all I need is a quick way to generate the water looking effect.. =)

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the reason I ask what object you will be applying it to is because it kinda depends on the angle you are looking at it. are you looking to have just a straight-over-the-top angle or is it going to be at an angle like the image you provided?

i've never worked with an underwater look, but i can tell you right now you'll wanna work with a low opacity's using the brush tool, the distort > wave filter, and color dodge to taste

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Nick
Pixel-Infinity

Last edited by jadedchron, December 18th, 2003 12:50 AM (Edited 1 times)

This is what I've come up with so far... Let me know what you guys think...

Attached file---

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Quote:

Originally posted by jadedchron
the reason I ask what object you will be applying it to is because it kinda depends on the angle you are looking at it. are you looking to have just a straight-over-the-top angle or is it going to be at an angle like the image you provided?

i've never worked with an underwater look, but i can tell you right now you'll wanna work with a low opacity's using the brush tool, the distort > wave filter, and color dodge to taste

Just straight from the top.. =) I was also thinking of doing something like you were looking along the bottom of the water and then you get the rays of light shining through etc. =) It'll take a while for that though. I wouldn't mind seeing a result better than what I did.. =)

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ehh i dont really like it.. very hard to tell what it is... but i have tryed to make a *good* water effect befor also.. its not easy. I think you might want to use the plastic wrap some *on low opacity* to get the kind of water effect... but geting the water to shape out nicely is where i have problems so i cant help ya there..:confused: good luck with it though

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I was given a great link on cgtalk:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~kand/caustics/

And you'll find a nice program for generating caustics...

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