Adaptive spectral mapping for real-time dispersive refraction

Abstract

Spectral rendering, or image synthesis utilizing the constituent wavelengths of white light, enables the rendering of iridescent colors caused by phenomena such as dispersion, diffraction, interference and scattering. Dispersion creates the rainbow of colors when white light shines through a prism. Caustics, the focusing and de-focusing of light through a refractive medium, can be interpreted as a special case of dispersion where all the wavelengths travel along the same paths. In this paper we extend Adaptive Caustic Mapping (ACM), a previously proposed caustics mapping algorithm, to handle physically-based dispersion. Our proposed method runs in screen-space, and is fast enough to display plausible dispersion phenomena at real-time frame rates. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.