Thin layer of water looks very dense

[timAugustine]

I cannot believe all the response I got!

Going through the response, I think I found a solution. I increased the Caustic Blur to 1 and that did the trick. I'm attaching the new renders here. I also reduced the glossy depth and diffuse depth further. Thank you for all your help!

With Caustic Blur set to 1

I do have some further questions if that's ok.

1) Does enabling "Allow Caustics" increase render cost for an engine like Octane?
2) And I know that this is a very scene dependent value, but would this light bright be considered bright enough? This is how I'm lighting this scene

Light Strength

Thank you again for all your answers!

Regards,
Tim

[elsksa]

I do have some further questions if that's ok.

Absolutely.

1) Does enabling "Allow Caustics" increase render cost for an engine like Octane?

Only for the Photon Tracing Kernel

2) And I know that this is a very scene dependent value, but would this light bright be considered bright enough? This is how I'm lighting this scene

This is the way. It depends on several factors. Some scenes can go as high as 10 or even 30 tops, by adjusting exposure accordingly. 3, 5 is fine.

[timAugustine]

Thank you, once again!