Image Synthesis Final Project Proposal: "See Through Glitter"

Adding polarization to LRT for seeing the bottom through water using sunglasses

Pieter Panman, 7/4/2003

In my project I will implement the effect of the polarization of light reflecting off of water.
If you look at clear water, usually the glitter of the sun and other objects prevent you from seeing the bottom. However, the light reflected off of water is generally polarized horizontally. So with sunglasses that filter out horizontally polarized light, you should be able to see "into" the water.

I am proposing to implement polarization in LRT. I think this requires the following:

• Defining and adding polarization of a ray
• Modifying code such that in intersections with objects, the light reflects properly.
• Adding a material that can filter light, acting as sunglasses
• Building a scene to demonstrate this effect. I was thinking of something like the images below.

I found some sources that talk about polarization and implementing this in a monte carlo ray tracer.

• Polarization Models for Monte Carlo ray tracing
• Ray Tracing with Polarization Parameters (requires account, not sure how to get that)
• Interesting details about polarization

Before

After

(images from