Good news: I'm not dead! I know it's been awfully quiet on my website for a long time, but now I finally have something to share again:
I've been working on a WebGL graphic demo about realtime caustics. The project is already complete and you can find the link further down in this post.
The realtime criteria may only hold for low quality settings, but it's still very fast. Also the caustics are not 100% physically accurate. However, with some extreme settings, you can get suprisingly good results. Here are some comparisons to LuxRender:
You can increase the accuracy by increasing the Sample Falloff and Sample Area, but it also slightly increases the noise. More influence on the noise and the performance has the number of Caustic Samples.
Later I might also release the project documentation (in german). The application itself can be found here:
http://misc.project-nion.net/webglcaustics/
Just a little standard disclaimer:
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.
Compatibility has only been confirmed for Firefox so far. If you use a different browser, I would be happy to get some feedback.
That all being said: Have fun trying it out!
Whats next: I was in Japan over new year and will probably release a quite few photographs on deviantArt in the coming weeks. I have also two small game projects, which are still open. But those won't be finished soon. I'd also like to do some blendering, but I'm afraid I have as little time as ever.
