A comprehensive geometrical optics application for wave rendering

This paper presents a novel method to model wave effects in a ray tracer which attempts to account for the attenuation, scattering and absorption of light affected by participating media along rays. Inspired by diffraction shaders (DS), we propose an extension of this model to construct a new Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) to simultaneously take into consideration the phase and amplitude variation of light. The new method can simulate diffraction effects of a variety of materials, where we introduce the Fresnel factor and a microfacet scattering metric which affect the absorption and geometrical attenuation of photons. Incorporating Wigner Distribution Function (WDF), our method is further extended to model interference effects after multiple bounces by deferring the phase calculation. An acceleration algorithm is also implemented to real-time model diffraction effects of different apertures. We demonstrate the validity of our method by generating wave patterns for diverse scenes.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slideHighlights•We introduce the Fresnel factor and a microfacet scattering metric.•We incorporate Wigner distribution function to model interference effects.•We implement an acceleration algorithm used for wave rendering using the CUDA.