Abstract:
This paper proposes a robust algorithm to compute caustics caused
by multiple reflections and refractions on the GPU. The proposed
algorithm solves two problems of previous methods, caustic light
leaks and caustic undersampling. In order to eliminate caustic
light leaks, terminal photon hits are stored and caustic patterns
are reconstructed on the faces of a layered distance map attached to the caustic
generator. To avoid undersampling, we propose caustic triangles to
be drawn instead of splatting photon hits. Unlike splatting, caustic
triangles adapt to the local density of the uneven photon distribution,
always form continuous patterns, do not cause excessive
blurring, and do not require manual user intervention to set the
size of these splats.