Camera moving into water tank mesh

[Andrew_Wilkins1]

Good day,

When dealing with cameras that enter a closed water tank.. ie. camera breaking the water line and we see the top and bottom of the surface as well as the inner tank.

The standard surface shader doesn't calculate the scattering within the water tank it seems but I've seen mentioned that one could use a volume shader instead but...as far as I’m aware—reading up in the docs and some quick testing:
“Arnold can use a shape container for volume rendering points, sphere and box primitives. Support for meshes is planned for a future release.”

In the case of a moving water mesh (ie. Ocean alembic from Houdini) where we wouldn’t be able to use a box primitive (unless really cheated), what would be the most elegant way to handle that?

aiFog, cheating with a volume primitive or just depth fog in comp?

All the best,
Andrew Wilkins

[lee_griggs · Accepted solution]

Cube mesh to volume info here.

[Andrew_Wilkins1]

Thanks Lee, I must admit it's quite funny getting a response regarding volumes from the creator of those awesome artworks. Haha.

For some reason I had ended up on this page Shading Engine - Volume shader, which threw me off a bit, but just redoing the steps seems to be working today for some weird reason. I think it must have been the Step Size.

I'll read through the docs you've linked and do some more testing.

Much appreciated!