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Atlas96 edited this page Dec 13, 2025 · 5 revisions

Caustics

Caustics

Caustics volumes that project caustics onto objects inside them

How does it work?:

Caustics in LitMAS Water 3 work independently of a water volume, they are their own object called the Caustics Box. The Caustics Box comes with every example LitMAS Water Volume, with their own scene gizmo. Selecting the Caustics Box lets you see where it is covering. Caustics do NOT work on Meta Quest, a premade Platform Event script is already setup to auto-disable it on Meta Quest.

Causticsbox

Shader Settings

Caustics

  • Color | Color of caustics. Caustics should not be extremely bright
  • Caustics | Caustics texture, shader is additive, so use additive textures. There are 5 example caustic textures in LitMAS Water/Systems/Caustics/Textures
  • Enable Anti-Tile | Enables anti-tiling on caustics. Highly recommended to leave on
  • Caustic Scale | Scale of caustics
  • Flow A (XY = Speed) | Speed of 1st scrolling caustic texture, first input is X axis scroll, second input is Y axis scroll
  • Flow B (XY = Speed) | Speed of 2nd scrolling caustic texture, first input is X axis scroll, second input is Y axis scroll

Visuals

Chromatic Aberration

  • Chromatic Aberration Toggle | Enables chromatic aberration on caustics. Useful for caustic textures that do not already have split and offset RGB channels. Can be used to further split RGB for a realistic caustic look
    • RGB Offset | How intense chromatic aberration effect is
CausticsChromaticAberration

Blue Noise Diffusion

  • Enable Blue Noise | Enables blue noise, allowing caustics to have a more diffused, subtle look. Also presents interesting visuals
    • Noise Diffusion | How intense the diffusion effect is on caustics. Keep very subtle, ~0.02 - 0.15
CausticsBlueNoise

Post Processing

  • Enable Post Processing | Enables post processing
    • Grayscale Toggle | Make caustic color grayscale, no color besides black and white
      • Saturation Intensity | Control how saturated, or desaturated the caustic color is
    • Contrast Toggle | Adjust contrast on caustic color
      • Contrast Intensity | Control how much contrast caustic color has

UV Options

  • Enable Distorted UV's Toggle | Enables caustic UV's to be distorted for a realistic look if done right
  • Distortion | Texture that will distort caustics, this texture can be anything, however something that resembles a noise pattern works best. Use included Flow Distortion texture at LitMAS Water/Assets/Textures/Other/Flow Distortion.png for best effect
  • Tiling | Keep very low, at around ~0.1 - 0.1, so the distortion texture is blown up large across caustic area. This allows for realisitc distortion that real caustics have
  • Offset | Controls distortion texture scrolling across caustics, first value controls. first input is X axis scroll, second input is Y axis scroll. Keep values very low, around ~0.01 - 0.01
  • Distortion Strength | How intense UV distortion is
CausticsDistorted

Limitation

Caustics projection stretches when on entirely vertical walls. This is a limitation that I have not been able to overcome. The working solution is to make the Caustics Box small enough so that it does not touch vertical walls. If you cannot make it small to not touch walls, then lower it so it only projects onto the floor. If the stretching is a non-issue to you, than go with it.

CausticsIssue

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