Polynomial Optics: A Construction Kit for Efficient Ray-Tracing of Lens Systems

dc.contributor.authorHullin, Matthias B.en_US
dc.contributor.authorHanika, Johannesen_US
dc.contributor.authorHeidrich, Wolfgangen_US
dc.contributor.editorFredo Durand and Diego Gutierrezen_US
dc.date.accessioned2015-02-28T07:35:19Z
dc.date.available2015-02-28T07:35:19Z
dc.date.issued2012en_US
dc.description.abstractSimulation of light transport through lens systems plays an important role in graphics. While basic imaging properties can be conveniently derived from linear models (like ABCD matrices), these approximations fail to describe nonlinear effects and aberrations that arise in real optics. Such effects can be computed by proper ray tracing, for which, however, finding suitable sampling and filtering strategies is often not a trivial task. Inspired by aberration theory, which describes the deviation from the linear ray transfer in terms of wavefront distortions, we propose a ray-space formulation for nonlinear effects. In particular, we approximate the analytical solution to the ray tracing problem by means of a Taylor expansion in the ray parameters. This representation enables a construction-kit approach to complex optical systems in the spirit of matrix optics. It is also very simple to evaluate, which allows for efficient execution on CPU and GPU alike, including the computation of mixed derivatives of any order. We evaluate fidelity and performance of our polynomial model, and show applications in high-quality offline rendering and at interactive frame rates.en_US
dc.description.seriesinformationComputer Graphics Forumen_US
dc.description.volume31
dc.identifier.doi10.1111/j.1467-8659.2012.03132.x
dc.identifier.issn1467-8659en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8659.2012.03132.xen_US
dc.publisherThe Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.en_US
dc.subjectI.3.7 [Computer Graphics]en_US
dc.subjectThree Dimensional Graphics and Realismen_US
dc.subjectRaytracingen_US
dc.titlePolynomial Optics: A Construction Kit for Efficient Ray-Tracing of Lens Systemsen_US
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