COMMERCIAL·2024·STUDIO XD
Caustic Glass
Caustic Glass began as a personal optics study and became the opening title for a design conference. The look leans into wavelength-dependent refraction — the rainbow fringing you get at the edge of thick glass — pushed just far enough to feel designed without going cartoonish.
BREAKDOWN
Optics
Rendered with wavelength-dependent photon paths so dispersion falls out physically rather than being faked in comp. The index of refraction is animated subtly to make the caustics breathe.
Look dev & finish
Karma for the spectral render, with the caustic passes split out so the intensity and chroma could be balanced against the type in Nuke.
SIMULATION NOTES
- Spectral samples split into ~12 wavelengths for clean fringing.
- Caustics are noisy — heavy sampling on the light, denoise per-pass.
CREDITS
- CLIENT
- Studio XD
- LOOK DEV & LIGHTING
- Dohzah
- YEAR
- 2024