Baltor Get started

Gallery / Procedural textures

Water caustics traced onto a pool floor

In your harnessProcedural textureMIT

Generate tileable maps of caustic light focused by a wavy water surface onto a floor: rays refracted through a periodic surface are splatted onto pool tiles, rippled sand, rock or a grey card, and the emissive map holds the light. Use for pools, shallow seas, aquariums and as a projected light cookie.

Render of Water caustics traced onto a pool floor
The render its check recorded in Godot 4.7.2, 256 by 256 pixels.

What it takes and gives

Entry point
generate
Maps
albedo, normal, roughness, height, ao, emissive
Parameters
wave_cells, focus, ripples, light, floor, tiles_across, hue_shift, saturation and 1 more
Presets
default, sandy_shallows, deep_reef, light_cookie
Tileable
yes
Command line
python water_caustics.py --size 1024 --seed 7 --preset NAME --out DIR [--width W --height H] [--set NAME=VALUE] [--directx-normal] [--orm]
Godot material
material.tres
Blender builder
blender_material.build_material(folder)

Limits. One still frame, not an animation. Refraction uses the paraxial approximation (ray offset proportional to the surface slope), light falls straight down and there is no dispersion, absorption or depth-dependent blur, so it is an approximation of real caustics rather than a light transport simulation. Brightness comes from four rays per output pixel and a light smoothing filter, so the finest lines are about a pixel wide at any size. The floor types are simple; the emissive map holds colour only, so the engine sets the emission strength.

Details

Kind
Procedural texture
Engine
Python 3.10 or later
Files
12 files, 229.8 KB
Licence
MIT
Declared effects
runs commands, writes files
Checked with
Godot 4.7.2, gl_compatibility
Checks
command line generates declared maps, maps decode, maps have declared size and channels, maps tile without a seam, normal vectors unit length facing out, maps carry detail, godot imports the maps, godot material template loads every map, godot compatibility render, capture shows the textured surface, blender builds the material
Techniques
Paraxial refraction of vertical light through a height field, Photon splatting: ray density by bilinear deposition with wrap-around, Fractional Brownian motion on two incommensurate lattices for the water surface, Separable 1-2-1 smoothing filter, Height to tangent-space normal by central differences, Cavity occlusion from blurred height
Tags
texture, pbr, tileable, water, caustics, emissive, pool, underwater
Identity
library.supply.creative_originals.69b5c3626ccae353a8afb006.7db14c0c564b9aa6
Version
7db14c0c564b9aa61f612d186cc55396196c5adc8a0e5951391706dac7b95448

The version is the SHA-256 of the item your harness downloads; every file in it names its own checksum.

Something wrong with this item, its rights or its safety? Report it on the support page, or from your harness after a download.