Caustics

Caustics are a type of reflective lighting which bring greatly enhanced realism to a virtual environment. They are a refinement on raytracing (or alternatively on raycasting), in which additional calculations start when the light rays hit an object with a refractive index greater than 0, and a transparency greater than 0. In other words, an object that is partially transparent and scatters the light.

They are a secondary raytrace that comes not from the lightsource, but as a reflection from the object, onto other objects, treating the object as if it was a lightsource of the reflected light. To save processing power of course, only those reflections as seen by the viewpoint are rendered, but it provides an additional layer of lighting. Caustics can recreate effects such as the glowing crescent on the desk below a backlit glass, or the flickering patterns of reflected light on a wall above a pool of water.

See Also: Raytracing, Raycasting, Scanline Rendering, Caustic Network, Volumetric Caustics, Photon Mapped Caustics

Below, we offer a selection of links from our resource databases which may match this term.

Caustic Network Caustic Shading Caustics Direct Light Indirect Light

Photon Mapped Caustics Photon Mapping Progressive Radiosity Volume Caustics

Volumetric Caustics

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Inexpensive Underwater Caustics Using Cg
A look at creating aesthetically pleasing, realistic water movements, using caustics - for ultra-realism for low processing power.

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