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Ultra-fast Screen-Space Refractions and Caustics via Newton's Method

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Chase Mayer, Ulf Assarsson, Erik Sintorn

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Description

Ultra-fast Screen-Space Refractions and Caustics via Newton's Method replaces brute-force screen-space ray marching with Newton root finding against G-buffer depth for refraction hits.

The same idea extends to refracted light paths to approximate screen-space caustics with fewer steps than linear marching in many scenes.

The Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques article documents failure modes such as depth discontinuities and poor initial guesses, plus mitigations, demo videos, and released source code.

Implementers need screen-space rendering experience, G-buffer conventions, and numerical root-finding intuition at an intermediate to advanced level.

JCGT practical rendering notes are common references for engine programmers experimenting with screen-space effects beyond basic SSR.

Link last verified accessible on 2026-09-28.