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Water Caustics

Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26470
Printed Date: 11 September 2025 at 6:13pm


Topic: Water Caustics
Posted By: NancyGold
Subject: Water Caustics
Date Posted: 20 November 2018 at 7:45am
Why do people use caustics everywhere they draw water? If you look up real photos of rivers and lakes, you won't see caustics, just bottom if the water is clear and shallow, some ripples and reflection of sky and surroundings. It is actually hard to find real caustics photo on google image search - most came out of badly done 3d renders.Also, these voronoi diagram patterns arises only at very specific ripples conditions, producing equidistant waves. Yet in pixelart, water caustics are seems mandatory, and they all look like caustics are on the surface, not the bottom. In fact, pixelart lava is frequently made out of recolored water with caustics!! Lava. With caustics. Makes you think...


Replies:
Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 20 November 2018 at 8:05am
People do it because it looks nice and reads instantly, which is more important in some cases than realism.

Lava with caustics is silly, but if it looks nice, then it looks nice.

(Also, you can see water caustics on the bottom FROM the surface, so they're great for creating the effect of shallow, clear water.)


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