Tag: Raytracing

I love raytracing. It is one of the most fabulous and fascinating things a powerful computer can do… and raytracing keeps on getting better and better. However, one of the biggest limitations of Blender’s Default Raytracer, “Cycles”, has always been its lack of caustics tracing capabilities. I assume that if you clicked on the title of this blog, you already know what caustics are so I’ll waste little time describing them. Caustics are the fun ways that light bends through refractive objects causing light rays to change direction. The most commonly recognizable example of this in the real world is easily how sunlight bends off the waves of a swimming pool. To achieve this effect in the Cycles renderer, usually required cumbersome tricks… but not anymore.