Improved Caustics

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Coming soon-- path tracer only.  Suspended faceted balls-- one metal, one glass.  I think the algorithm is robust enough to handle glass covers over light sources, reflectors behind light sources, etc..

[George Ioannidis]

Oh! nXt is getting mature day by day with all those new features to one hell of the rendering beast! Impressive! Well done, Roy!

[qweqwi]

Fantastic...Good job

[Sampdoria]

Again, very nice!

 

[Marc Chaumier]

Thanks Roy, nice fonction, but, for your health, you have to sleep a little bit... But from my point of view, keep on...

Seriously, does this tool work for the reflection (caustic?) of the water of interior pool on the ceilling or the wall? Not very good explained, but I hope you understand what I mean.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Yes-- you're getting both reflected and refracted caustics from the glass ball, for example.  For physically-based materials the amount of reflection depends on the IOR of the material-- in this case water (1.33).  You can also "fake" it by adding some extra reflectivity to the water.

 

One very exciting thing about this algorithm is the reflection of the caustic made by the glass ball in the window-- this particular light path is very difficult to capture, even by programs like Maxwell.

 

Still working out how to do this stuff with daylighting, BTW....