A Fast Rendering Method for Refractive and Reflective Caustics Due to Water Surfaces

Abstract

Abstract In order to synthesize realistic images of scenes that include water surfaces, the rendering of optical effectscaused by waves on the water surface, such as caustics and reflection, is necessary. However, rendering causticsis quite complex and time‐consuming. In recent years, the performance of graphics hardware has made significantprogress. This fact encourages researchers to study the acceleration of realistic image synthesis. We present herea method for the fast rendering of refractive and reflective caustics due to water surfaces. In the proposed method,an object is expressed by a set of texture mapped slices. We calculate the intensities of the caustics on the objectby using the slices and store the intensities as textures. This makes it possible to render caustics at interactive rateby using graphics hardware. Moreover, we render objects that are reflected and refracted due to the water surfaceby using reflection/refraction mapping of these slices. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3.1 [Computer Graphics]: Hardware Architecture I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three‐Dimensional Graphics and Realism