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Submitted by , posted on 20 March 2003
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Image Description, by
This IOTD shows the texture creation tool "Caustics Generator".
Caustics can be described as the light pattern you see at the bottom of a
pool on a sunny day. This tool will let you render such caustics patterns.
The rendered images can be animated and used for realtime graphics and
are tileable in both space and time.
Caustics are caused by the fact that light is reflected or refracted one
or several times before actually hitting a surface. The more light that
is refracted to the same area on a surface, the brighter the area will be
lit.
The patterns rendered by this program are calculated by simulating the
effect of light refracting through water. The water surface is made
tileable in both space and time in order to make the rendered images
tileable.
You can change the rendered pattern by altering several parameters such
as water depth, amplitude, wave frequency etc. Some examples of rendered
textures are shown in the image above.
The rendered images can for example be used as realtime textures for
games and animations.
The program is released as GNU GPL and can be downloaded from:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~kand/caustics/
/ Kjell Andersson
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