hi,

I'm trying to render out a scene with a few bottles etc. in it - it's looking ok with global illumination and final gather, but the minute I switch on caustics it goes crazy. I read that you can't use directional lights (emitting photons) with caustics, so I switched off the photons on my main directional light and it fixed the problem but the resulting render had little 'zing'.
I switched photons on in the small point lights I have around the fg table and dialled down the global photons but I get these really burnt out brights. all the point lights have quadratic decay and are low intensity (tho I've been told that light intensity and photon volume/intensity are independent?)
It seems to be one material thats particularly prone to burn - you can see the very bright glass in the center, and also in the bg there's glasses with the same material glowing like mad. It's a miaX material, just a few standard glass presets blended together... all the other glasses have similar miaX blends applied. that said, the table is a standard anistropic, which still glows like mad even when I apply the initial lambert to it.

is there certain materials that're no-no's with caustics, or is there a particular limit to the total number of photons you should have in a scene? for example, if i have a point light or small spot that I'm using close to an object to create a few rim hi-lights ect. do I need to dial the number of photons down? there's quite a few lights around the fg so my thinking is that all the total number of photons is too great around that area. but of course, I don't know what I'm on about...