I know we can not use the water effects when using path tracing for now.
(I don’t see it on the roadmap, but can imagine it must be high on the list..?)
I know the trick to use glass as a water effect instead, but can’t get the effect the way I want.. for example I want to show the stair in the pool, and also have a stylish water effect.)
Does anybody have some good tips which type to use and settings?
(for now I have to use photoshop to combine the pt and the non-path. But have to find out how to do that with video? Any tips for that maybe?)
for still images, using a glass material works perfectly fine. if you want to have caustics, you can create a copy of the pool geometry, create a fake 'caustics material' and play with the glow settings.
when i look at your image, i can see that your scale setting is set incorrectly. you will have to play around with reflection setting as well, as I can see that the current refraction is blurry. here's are some recent samples of path traced pool renders:
Video is a little more tricky, but not impossible. You would have to set a speed for the glass texture, so that it looks like the waves are gently moving. You can do the same with the caustics material. I am aware that this is not an optimal solution, but it should work okay for the time being.
video test: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/23s0ax70t2oo98z/Video1_002.mp4?dl=0
another sample including fake caustics
