Real-time Dispersion Rendering Algorithm Based on Caustics Map and Single Charge Coupled Device Image Sensor

Dispersion effects are important in rendering scenes that contain translucent objects. Existing ray-tracing algorithms must rely on high-end GPU hardware to achieve real-time rendering when rendering dispersion. Based on the image-space caustic map technique, a concise and efficient real-time dispersion rendering method is proposed in the paper, in which the rendering efficiency is improved by reducing the number of monochromatic lights that need to be emitted based on the idea of single charge coupled device image sensor. A variable-size photon drawing strategy is proposed for filling the gaps formed by the insufficient number of monochromatic light samples. The experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve real-time rendering on PC. Our proposed method can simulate the whole continuous spectrum with 7 monochromatic lights of discrete sampled spectrum, reducing the computation and storage of rendering, and it improves the problem of noise formed by insufficient number of emitted rays.