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Computing caustic effects by backward beam tracing

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Abstract

Caustic effects produced by the transport of light from specular surfaces to diffuse surfaces are a common type of optical effect that cannot be modeled by ray tracing. We propose a two-pass algorithm to model caustic effects efficiently and reliably. In the proposed method, information on transmitted light beams is collected in a tree structure, which is used to compute the intensity efficiently. The method does not require the polygonization of diffuse surfaces and can easily be combined with any rendering algorithm.

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Chuang, JH., Cheng, SA. Computing caustic effects by backward beam tracing. The Visual Computer 11, 156–166 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01898601

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01898601

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