Real-time Rough Refraction

We present an algorithm to render objects of transparent materials with rough surfaces in real-time, under distant illumination. Rough surfaces cause wide scattering as light enters and exits objects, which significantly complexifies the rendering of such materials. We present two contributions to approximate the successive scattering events at interfaces, due to rough refraction: First, an approximation of the bidirectional scattering function (BSDF = BRDF + BTDF), using spherical Gaussians, suitable for real-time estimation of environment lighting using pre-convolution; second, a combination of cone tracing and macro-geometry filtering to efficiently integrate the scattered rays at the exiting interface of the object. We demonstrate the quality of our approximation by comparison against stochastic raytracing.