Caustics Sphere

I made this sphere/bubble thing after seeing a pen & paper tutorial on how to make realistic light and caustics. I wasn't planning to put the file online, but some people showed interest, so now you can have it too!

The rig is basically a Null object with a lot of sliders, checkboxes, dropdowns and color controls.

Download it, play with it, use it, tag me or show it to me 👍 If you're into rigging, mail or PM me your thoughts and I might improve it in the future.

Notes

🃏 The point of this experiment was to make it entirely with Shape Layers (and a few AE native effects). I specifically avoided the methods of Andrew Kramer and Philip Von Borries (but those are great, so check them out). My method obviously has different pros and cons.

✅ The rig is not too restrictive in the sense that I did not write clamps or anything to stop you from breaking it. Two reasons:

1. I don't like being too realistic in my work, so there's a bit of leeway here and there (ex: you can have the spotlight on top of the object and still see the caustics on the ground)

2. I'd rather let you break it so you understand how it works.

Also, I'm not a professional rigging artist, so this is by no means a production-ready rig.

❌What it does not do:

- Multiple shapes at a time

- Complex shapes

- Fast preview or render, lol

- Waffles

- Laundry