Lighting can make or break any 3D scene. A beautifully modeled object, terrain or person will look terrible with improper lighting, but if lit properly, nearly anything will look realistic because the lighting will convince the viewer that the object or scene is real. For simple materials, realistic lighting isn’t too difficult to achieve, however, with transparent or translucent materials, glossy materials, liquids and others, achieving realistic lighting can be a bit tougher.

The key to working with lighting for these types of materials is caustics. Caustics is light rays being reflected or refracted through a material, creating a focused light ray on the other side of the material. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to achieve simple yet realistic caustics in 3D Studio Max.

cg.creativefan.com/achieve-realistic-caustics-in-3d-studio-max-with-mental-ray/

cg.creativefan.com/achieve-realistic-caustics-in-3d-studio-max-with-mental-ray/