The Software (User Side)
With the new announcement, Caustic now has a huge volume of user-side software available. Now if you own a Caustic Card, you can get real-time raytracing in Autodesk Showcase, Lightworks Artisan, Rhino, and other tools. For an impressive example of this look at the podcast where I see the Lightworks Artisan demonstration.
Lightworks builds visualization tools for other systems to drop-in, allowing other vendors to offer state-of-the-art visuals without needed to build it themselves. In the Artisan demo, they take the example of a CAD product.
- At the bottom, you can imagine your classic CAD display: Basic OpenGL rendering, flat shading, visible edges, overlaid with measurements and data.
- At the top, you could see your CausticOne display: High-detail rendering with reflections and shadows, and fully interactive.
While the CausticOne won’t replace a full ray-tracing solution (like mental ray), it’s a great intermediate step between wireframe/lowres and the high-end stuff, that can now be run real-time and interactively.
