Silverwing: Photon Caustic Trick(s) - Decouple Caustics and Lights

MESSAGE: Happy 2025 to all of you. I hope the new Year welcomed you nicely. I am opening this year with another caustics, light (linking) and octane performance oriented one. As I was thinking about a new topic I remembered that I used a trick in my recent scene that might be something for you who are dealing with caustics and want to optimize them a bit and / or split them out into their own AOV. Good news, because this is exactly what we are going to do here 🙌 DOWNLOAD: --------------------------------------------------- Download the Tut Scene by becoming a Patreon member. No matter what tier. https://patreon.com/silverwingvfx PATREON: --------------------------------------------------- You can support me and the community by becoming a PATREON. This helps me to keep all my content free and accessible to everyone. https://patreon.com/silverwingvfx Thank you so much for all my existing PATREONs for your generosity 🙏 FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: --------------------------------------------------- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RaphaelRau BluSky: @raphaelrau.bsky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silverwingvfx Behance: https://www.behance.net/silverwing-vfx Cara: https://cara.app/silverwing-vfx TRAINING: --------------------------------------------------- If you want to learn Shading / OSL, I also offer 1:1 training. Contact me, if you are interested. VIDEO RELATED LINKS: --------------------------------------------------- Maxons Official Website: https://www.maxon.net/ Octane C4D Otoy Official Website: https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=85 Blender Foundations Official Website: https://www.blender.org/download/ Blender Octane Otoy Official Website: https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=113 CHAPTERS: --------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Intro 00:31 Preview: What we are going to do 01:38 C4D Octane: Looking at the Scene 02:49 Glass Tut scene 03:08 3 Rules of Caustics: 01 Turn on Photon Tracing 03:24 3 Rules of Caustics: 02 Create a Caustic Material 03:56 3 Rules of Caustics: 03 Create a Light 04:25 Octane: Direct Light 05:14 Octane: Tweaking the Caustics 06:02 Octane: Direct Light Bug? 08:10 Explaining the Idea 08:53 Octane: Direct Light Caustics Only 09:34 Octane: Scene Lighting with an Area Light 10:14 Octane: Tweaking the Area Light 11:17 Octane: Mixing and Matching 12:06 Octane: Introducing AOVs to Split Out Caustics 13:10 Octane: Glass Material 13:32 Octane: Separating Materials for Scene and Caustics 14:52 Octane: What is it Good for? Creating Bump. 16:41 Octane: Dispersion / Abberation 17:51 Octane: Solving Caustic Artifacts 18:46 Quick Thought: Use the Light You Want 19:25 Quick Thougth: Also Alter HDRI Caustics 20:05 Quick Thought: Optimize Render Speed with Photon Tracing 21:08 It's a Wrap 21:29 Patreon Thanks 22:51 Famous Last Words