Free Optics Simulation in Blender - Tutorial

This video shows how to setup Blender and the LuxCore renderer to perform 3D optical simulations (ray optics). Both programs are free and open source !
With these tools you can simulate any combination of:
* Lenses
* Mirrors
* Prisms
* Laser beams
* Freeform optics
* Screens
The physically based LuxCore renderer supports efficient pathtracing (Bidirection Metropolis Light Transport) to handle indirect lighting, scattering, relfections and refractions with caustics. For optics simulations, it is far superior to blenders build in raytracer 'Cycles'.
Blender: www.blender.org/download/
LuxCore: luxcorerender.org/
0:00 Introduction
0:29 Installing LuxCore
1:43 Setting up demo scene
3:16 Render settings
4:20 Adding a lens
5:00 Setting up materials (glass / diffuse)
5:54 First simulation results
6:15 Fog for beam visibility
8:15 Creating a mirror
8:53 Playing around with complex scene
10:18 Rendering the result

[@cyou3403]

This is very useful indeed. I might start to use these kind of simulations for the figure of my future papers!

[@DiffractionLimited]

Thank you. Sounds like a great idea. I always apreciate nice visual explainations in papers. Whats your research area?

[@cyou3403]

@@DiffractionLimited I do quantum optics/imaging. One related hot topics in the research community is the localization of light in a disordered medium, which might be very interesting to do some visuals.

[@HuygensOptics]

Thanks for making this excellent tutorial! I think I'm going to try this myself. I also want to try out the Python script you wrote for the wave simulations or ask if you would maybe be interested to make them. So, I wonder whether I could contact you directly by email. There does not seem to be a link or email address on your channel. You can let me know if you are open to this through the "about" page of my channel or the huygens optics website

[@DiffractionLimited]

Hi, so first: I added a contact email to my channel. If you need a simulation, just write me what you have in mind. I am happy to make one for you. If you try the python program, let me know if you have any trouble getting it to run so I can fix the issues. Also thank you for the kind words :)

[@3dnormal]

Mindblowing. Is it accurate to the lenses shape and resolution, if you place it in front of the camera?

[@naturaldarknessandrational2887]

Great tutorial. I'm having my own fight with blendluxcore now, and it's great, but it still seems to have some quirks. Like for getting the fog volume to appear I need to connect to outside volume instead of inside volume for the fog not to fill the whole scene. Plus, the beam then actually only shows up as a reflection on the table, not in the volume itself. Are these real quirks, or am I just missing out stuff?

[@Fuergu]

Can Luxcore render calculate wave feature of light? like interference pattern

[@DiffractionLimited]

Unfortunately not, its a ray simulation only.

[@naturaldarknessandrational2887]

Now *that* would be awesome! But alas, even many commercial optics design packages don't do that...

[@BrendaCreates]

LuxCore is slow AF.