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How would you go about creating a realistic deep water shader to depict a scene such as this one from blue planet II? I tried with a volume scatterer but had mixed results. Ideally it would be amazing to tie the shader to the water's depth, thus simulating everything from shallow waters, twilight zone, and the deep.

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Hello :). This is practically just dense volumetrics. Principled Volume is all you need. Unfortunately, Cycles isn't very good at rendering volumetrics, so you'll get a lot of noise. $\endgroup$
    – jachym michal
    Commented Mar 28, 2021 at 17:31
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks! Any advice on how to increase the rendering's quality? $\endgroup$
    – gugiek
    Commented Mar 28, 2021 at 18:18
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    $\begingroup$ Hey :). High samples with a Denoiser, there's no magic button. Last time I rendered such a scene I used 15 000+ samples. $\endgroup$
    – jachym michal
    Commented Mar 28, 2021 at 18:22
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    $\begingroup$ Or you could use Eevee, but you'll need to render at double resolution to get it pixel perfect. Unfortunately, Eevee is also more finicky than Cycles. $\endgroup$
    – HISEROD
    Commented Mar 28, 2021 at 18:53

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All you need is the Principled Volume shader.

  1. Create a volumetric cube
  2. Give the volume a very light color, and use Density to control it
  3. Use real units for light intensity (lumens). Related answer: Simulating a 40W Light Bulb.

Lights: 10 million lumens (a really strong searchlight), Density: 0.1, Samples: 2000 + Denoiser enter image description here

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Adding a tiny bit of displacement in comp might help as well. $\endgroup$
    – brockmann
    Commented Mar 28, 2021 at 20:37

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