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Abstract

We present a new method for real-time rendering of sophisticated lighting
effects in and around refractive objects. It enables us to realistically
display refractive objects with complex material properties, such as
arbitrarily varying refraction index, inhomogeneous attenuation, as well as
spatially-varying anisotropic scattering and reflectance properties.
User-controlled changes of lighting positions only require a few seconds of
update time. Our method is based on a set of ordinary differential equations
derived from the eikonal equation, the main postulate of geometric optics. This
set of equations allows for fast casting of bent light rays with the complexity
of a particle tracer. Based on this concept, we also propose an efficient light
propagation technique using adaptive wavefront tracing. Efficient GPU
implementations for our algorithmic concepts enable us to render visual effects
that were previously not reproducible in this combination in real-time.