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Fast real-time caustics from height fields

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Abstract

Caustics are crucial in water rendering, yet they are often neglected in real-time applications due to the demanding computational requirements of the general-purpose caustics computation methods. In this paper we present a two-pass algorithm for caustics computation that is extremely fast and produces high-quality results. Our algorithm is targeted for commonly used height field representations of water and a planar caustic-receiving surface. The underlying theory of our approach is presented along with implementation details and pseudo codes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

    Cem Yuksel & John Keyser

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  1. Cem Yuksel
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  2. John Keyser
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Correspondence to Cem Yuksel.

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Yuksel, C., Keyser, J. Fast real-time caustics from height fields. Vis Comput 25, 559–564 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-009-0350-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-009-0350-4

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