Layering

It’s all about layering. I break it down into the separate elements: water surface, light source and volume particles.

For the water surface, I have a reflective panning water material on a plane. This is actually opaque as i wanted to focus on just the underwater, and looking at reference the surface can be surprisingly opaque when looking from underneath! Ontop of this i have a ripple particle which distorts the surface and gives it a more organic feel. There are also ripple particles against the edges of the water to fake the lapping interaction around the edge.

The lighting rig I talk about in the next bit.

Lighting

The lighting has evolved into a bit of a complex rig but just started by looking at my reference and breaking it down layer by layer.

It’s basically a gradient from surface to depth, from transparent to the deep blue scatter. Also in terms of caustics think of them as being in focus near the surface to fall off to blurry the deeper it goes.