There, some more cowstics for you!
Don’t disown your own
joke
Yes the greek root says all about the “accurateness” of the usage of the word, no mistake there indeed.
Well then “caustics” can burn in hell 
There, some more cowstics for you!
Don’t disown your own
joke
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Yes, nice try at a caustic answer (funny how caustic can be used as meaning accurate yet also burning), but anyway not many people know what someone is talking about when using the word caustics (many answers also established that in this thread, we know what these caustics are, because they are used more often in our specific field)
In the wider world funnily the opposite of what you said will happen to me: 95% of the world will much clearly intuit and/or understand very well what I am talking about. The rest, the optics/3D/mathematical usage will always be a niche, a bubble, that obviously makes an accurate usage of the term. (So yes about a really small small part of the world knows and uses caustics accurately, or caustically to be caustic, and the rest 95% don’t even care to know what they really are, caustics just shine pretty)
And yet it will always be the imagination of kids that will make reality in the end… despite inaccuracies
God rays is scientifically completely wrong, there is no god you could say, yet the usage of god rays is much profane and not much enclosed to math/3D/science… and god rays came to be the much wider used term, for many of the reason I explained in my other answers
And caustics in its specific usage of curved surfaces refractions, hasn’t much received the same fate as a word… wonder why… Burning, destructive, is the most used meaning of the term in non specialized society. So much that in every day life, caustics as a burning crossing refraction point, is basically never used by anyone with emotional connection to reality ( feel free to have a caustic connection to reality, that’s up to you, yet not that many people will with connect your emotionless caustically described reality. Because as the title of this thread already expresses, caustic is accurate, yet the feeling it generates around us is not. Not because I say it, it just does)
The world is a funny place
Some things will never change…
Angel rays
I also think your viewpoint as a jewelry maker / renderer is a little skewed. Caustics are vital for the look and feel of your images.
They are ever present in all images, but you can get away with ignoring them in a lot of situations. Add in the fact that in any scene more complicated than a ring on a non-descript background, caustics can increase the amount of noise astronomically.
Again, they are ever present, but the consequences of including caustics can be detrimental to rendering times / noise level often reduces the effect they add to something nice, but not necessary.
For you though, the interplay of light and stone and metal is a key part of the art you are trying to deliver.
Just something to keep in mind when having a conversation like this with a broad cross-section of artists.
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Wait, wait, wait… Did I post in the “Off-topic” section? … Did I post and went to express these thoughts and feelings about caustics in the technical/artistic parts of the forums?
So you rather take into account before trying to discard me the way you are trying to and inaccurately and personally judging me (that actually is not remotely pertinent of you at an interpersonal behavioral level) as skewed, that I very caustically posted in the “Off-topic” section for so many conscious and accurate reasons.
Yet you systematically want to ignore these simple facts. If I wanted to have a feud with a broad cross section of artists like you express being the scope of this thread… the scope of this thread is anyone beyond our specialized other sections of this forum. I am talking caustics to my neighbors, the lady at the backery, my niece, my cousins, and anyone around. Yet you deliberately (and repeatedly, which is out of place coming from you) want to discredit what I came to say here. Good luck with that: I never came to make this thread saying that others artists should use more caustics, or that caustics rules and should be anywhere, or give any status of the usage of caustics in 3D communities or the lack of knowledge about caustics from my fellow artists friends and collegues.
And my goodness it is quite impressive how much you misread and tried to skew my words and everything expressed here. I am correctly making poetical thoughts about caustics in our human society in the “Off-topic” section and you come here rushing against me trying to be right about something than was not even a point in this thread to begin with.
And if I like to express my thoughts here on BA is because I know the posts get read by people of very diverse cultures, horizons and occupations. So you might want to check your thought process about this thread and also about me while you’re at it. I was at a café watching the sun creating amazing patterns in a glass on the table when I created this thread, surrounded by people of many kinds. This thread was born out of real and caustic observations of human interactions and feelings in a sociological and anthroplogical perspective, about words (so obviously linguistical perspective also), and because I was watching caustics in front of me, this thread came to life. And you, you try to minimize and undo what I saying by implying that I am saying inaccurate, childish and crazy things, trying to discard my words and me at the same time. (And the funny thing is that despite the fact that somethings I say might obviously be subjective like all of us do, and despite the fact that maybe many, yet wrongfully, people around here think I answer from my ego or whatever, it has almost never been the case. I would be the first to laugh about it, and I would l laugh a lot)
And yet you managed to make an off-topic answer in the “off-topic” section
Why is this topic getting so heated? Everyone take a step back and chill out, please, nothing personal is happening, no need to fight 
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Apparently it’s because in my opening I say that 1. “caustics are so misknown” and 2.“too many times dismissed by 3D artists”, and especially then the presence at the bottom of the hashtag 3. “stupidworld”, obviously can cause misinterpretation and misunderstanding about the nature of my post and intentions.
Naturally I never posted to offend anyone, I could edit the opening statement, but for those who read so far, I think the 3 causes of heat deserve clarifications:
-
“Caustics are so misknown” That’s not based on my personal opinion or perception at all. And also I am not saying so misknown to 3D artists, I mean misknow around the world to anyone in general, it’s a very verifiable fact, caustics as results of curved surface reflexions/refractions are not important at all to almost the entire humanity (also many repeated it in their answers). And that fact about caustics (99.998% of the world don’t care about caustics) is not about to change ever, hence the “Things that will never change” in the title.
1b. The most proeminent meaning aspect of caustics is referring to destruction. A famous historical example is the battle of Syracuse, where Archimedes used the power of caustics to burn down Roman ships. Even if many have doubts about facts from that battle, at least it shows that research on caustics are ancient and studied for weapons/war usages long ago. So the irony I wanted to show here is a recurring process/phenomenon in human behavior/development is that humans first proeminently develop weapons science and after that develop culture/art (military tech first then culture. It’s pretty obvious that if you can’t defend yourself, there won’t be much culture or art to develop. Bare in mind that electronics/computers first force of development is for war), and “caustics” is a very good example, as the word is almost completely used to talk about destructive aspects (chemicals/optics), yet behind all that “caustics” also is used to talk about the beautiful patterns of light. And that’s why I popped that observation about the word’s usage, because every time we use the word “caustics” we necessarily have to drag the destructive meaning with us (and yes I do mean that on psychological level/layer) when talking about the artistic side of caustics. And that’s why I brought the topic of using another word/wording when talking about the beauty of caustics as light patterns. And that’s a second thing that contributes to the title “Things will never change” destruction first, culture after. (also brings the concept that many times beauty is hidden/concealed behind or inside other concepts/phenomena, and that we as humans must learn to see behind that misleading world to find what’s truly worth it) -
“Too many times dismissed by 3D artists”, here I do speak about 3D communities of any softwares, not specifically you here on BA, in BA we even do have the chance to have access to free render engines as Luxcore and Octane, that are very caustics capable. So yes here I do push my opinion, pushing forward that a more progressive mentality for artists of many different field for development of technologies and softwares is the mentality that has helped the development of caustics in many softwares. 20 years ago, getting caustics in your renders took 24 hours photon renders. Nowadays, several softwares have fast light tracing capabilities. Caustics have made much progress because more people started to see that caustics are beautiful and are present in our every day life much more than it seems. Like someone said in an earlier answer, just go to the bathroom, most have small windows, just a ray of light comes and hits the metals and enamels elements and there you go, your everyday dose of angel rays. So that means that if I was a 3D interior designer, product designer of any kind, architect, car designer, movie vfx, and well in fact even a video game designer, and well any 3D artist for that matter, just see how NVIDIA by example is constantly evolving the real time raytracing GPU capabilities, and yes they did and do get a lot of critics for that, taged as useless by many and too expensive because it takes a 4090 gpu to run all the rays, yet NVIDIA will keep pushing forward because they know that the realism and beauty of ray calculations make video games better in the end.
So on my side, it’s as always an invitation to any 3D artist to keep studying, investigating and learning about any type of rays, instead of dismissing caustics thining caustics are slow, expensive, not noticable etc… Caustics have already evolved a lot, and will keep doing so. That’s also something that will never change, caustics always will have very dedicated livers and fans. If that number can be higher and I dan do something about it, here I am. -
Why the #stupidworld hashtag. No it’s not an attack to anyone not caring or not liking or not wanting to do caustics. By that hashtag I simply mean that the world in general is always more interested in anything that brings easy fast immediate benefits, and rejects what takes long concentrated hard efforts. And that’s funny and ironic, because that dangerous mentality is applied to art by many. How many artists were told that art is useless and that they would starve? That they should find a real job? Well, it’s a bit the same with caustics: caustics do take a lot of effort, a lot of software, a lot of hardware, to get what? Some more sparkles on my render. But yet, seeing caustics in real life causes many people very impactful emotions and inspirations, to the point to start a 3D career for life.
So here again, it’s an invitation to beware of your mentality in life in general, because what you think about caustics as dismissable, and if you keep thinking like that then any progress is dismissable, and in the end your art is dismissable (yes I exaggerate here, yes it’s a figure of speech, but you get the point). Caustics have a tremendous power to inspire any artists, 3D artists, and that should never be dismmised.
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I meant no offense, I wasn’t trying to discredit you in any way.
You do some very specialized art and your expertise shows. You see things that other people might not see. This focused talent makes you particularly observant to these effects, it’s a contributing factor to why you snapped that photo in the first place.
I was only trying to join and expand the conversation.
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The modeling of the glass is done. And such a design will produce angel rays, not caustics. It’s a matter of the obvious. One day a witted spirit will catch the wording, and smile. Like those afternoon sun rays.
It’s just a matter of time, for the render to come to life.
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I would rather society just drop the ‘living language’ garbage and restore English to the deep and thoughtful state it used to be. The language was never broken, so why is everyone trying to ‘fix’ it? I am fine with new terms describing things that only existed recently (ie. computer), but that is just filling holes.
We used to have beautiful features such as multiple forms of ‘the’. A lot of beautiful old songs unfortunately now have way too much depth for today’s youth to handle.
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It’s not about fixing, it’s about accuracy.
An example:
For centuries, silver was used to describe many white metals. And one metal in particular, Platinum (Pt), bears the marks of laziness, lack of curiosity and undiscerning knowledge, in the word itself. Platinum derived from the spanish “Plata”, that was dominating the mines and commerce… But thanks to a scientist who studied the matter and white metals, and so made the distinction, and Platinum was born and baptized… (side note: also showing the importance of words, something or someone without a proper name never comes to life, needs a word/name to be born).
And about angel rays / caustics… The root of the word refers to “burning” and other connecting concepts. "Caustics " is perfect for the light effect in magnifying glasses by example (I already gave historical references where the root and usage of caustics are accurate), as the converging rays are well indeed capables of burning and destroying.
And for the same reason of accuracy, I will keep maintaining that in everyday life, there are too many occasions where light rays generate beautiful and astonishing effects, but don’t generate any burning/destruction effects, thus making the usage of the word “caustics” much inappropriate, and very poorly sharing and describing these light patterns.
It’s not a whim, rant or whining. Just a more caustic observation of the word and real life situations in many contexts and the behavior of many people. Yes, my statement is scientific. The amount of situations and contexts where the usage of “caustics” is inaccurate and inadequate is much higher than those situations where caustics generate a welcomed description of the scene.
From these observations, I think science should branch/separate the study of caustics for burning (and all related destructive effects) aka light rays technologies that the root of the word properly describe, and separetly study (under another more profane word for everyday aesthetic usages) the aesthetical light rays, that do share the same mathematicals descriptions, but don’t share any burning function/effects, and do have amazing applications (and that would be more and much better developped if science would indeed separate the case scenarios) in the realm of architecture, product designs (for god sake, I have lamps, coffee machines etc that create angel rays every morning BY ACCIDENT, now imagine product generating angel rays ON PURPOSE), art and other fields.
Angel rays.
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And we called them “caustics” the whole time…
The irony of this debate, in a thread on a forum focusing on software named after a kitchen appliance.
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To be honest… int the past it took me a while before i realized this kitchen mixer association… because to blend has so many meanings… and for me as a none native speaker this may also be more different…
Also i think there is no language which only have one meaning for any word… so if humankind would “stay pure” with there language then there would be no ( what is it in english ?? ) transfered meaning… and so no advance in not only the language but the way we do think…
For example we go to work… even if we drive or we already sit in front of the computer and then think… so… now i’m going to work and do my clients request…
So it might be very interesting to name something beautifull… somekind of more suited…
Also what’s pure ?? The francophoned english after the normans conquered England or Old English, sometimes known as Anglo Saxon ?? The language spoken by the Angles and the Saxons… so they spoke somekind of slighlty different langugae before their intermix (or blending 
) and then their ancestors spoke…
…maybe they had a much more beautyfull name for it… maybe dragon fire ??
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I believe it was said Blender was named after a publication known as Blender Magazine.
That magazine was about music back then, not sure what they cover now if they still exist.
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Searching “Caustics in Japanese” on Google, I found a band called CAUSTICS, and they have a song called “Dragon Engine”… small world
Link here https://open.spotify.com/intl-es/artist/5sKz9suG8160SSU8B6FJ6L
Searching “Caustics rays in Japanese”, NVIDIA articles about REALTIME CAUSTICS in Unreal 4 show up… I made several allusions to the fact that caustics rendering as become fast, and I was mocked… As a complementary note, people writing these articles have the same remarks as me about the fact that artists dismiss caustics, and much do so by falsely believing caustics are slow, and also reminding that caustics are very common in everyday life (and many artists believe caustics are almost never seen… speaking about spending too much time on computer screens). GPUs have changed much of that.
Like I said, it’s the mentality around caustics that stayed in the medieval times, so yes, why not, dragon fire.
(Although much seems to indicate that many different languages use the same burning/destruction relations/concept/root for caustics)
About the irony on Blender/kitchen appliance/forum posting… beside the joke (yes Blender is confused with the kitchen appliance, and the tag #Blender is banned on some medias because of ugly things people do on videos using blenders), I understand that @thorn seems to think that posting on BA forum is narrow in scope and vain, and much apparently forgetting/not knowing that BA forum reaches very far on the Internet: people searched about opal materials years ago, found my publications and videos about opals on BA years after, and searched for me to create materials shaders for them
(let that serve as an example/invitation for people to write quality answers/facts when posting on BA…)
@Ace_Dragon Wikipedia states the following:
“The name Blender was inspired by a song by the Swiss electronic band Yello, from the album Baby, which NeoGeo used in its showreel.” Obviously don’t take Wikipedia as the ultimate source, but yes much of the naming of Blender seems to be music related, and not kitchen appliance related… Alanis Morissette would say ironic
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Intent vs Outcome.
I was aware of the story of the swiss magazine.
This is why one does a cursory check of what a word means in various places, when choosing a product name. Ask anyone in North America what a blender is, and they’ll talk about a machine that grinds food into puree.
I’ve even seen people post on r/blender asking about food processors…
Yes, that was exactly my hidden meaning… The observation on kitchen appliances was merely a smokescreen; my real agenda was to critique vanity and the demographic reach of the forum.
(!?!)
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In chemistry - the word “caustic” is used to indicate something is highly alkaline, corrosive and possibly dangerous - e.g. caustic soda (sodium hydroxide).
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Yeah yeah… Anyway yet again you are making very precious apportations to the topic of caustics/angel rays … by speaking about the name of the software …
(?!??!)
Earth was called flat for centuries… (and yet some still call it flat) … So your point is that if something has been done for centuries, even if wrong, it shouldn’t change/evolve or be questioned. Again, that same mentality
I’m happy to drop the discussion on the name of the software.
Yes, let’s go back to your point that using the word “caustics” is troubling, because in medieval times Japanese people used a similar word for dragon fire … or something… and this makes people think caustics are slow…or something…
I’m sensing a great topic for a SIGGRAPH paper.
You clearly have a talent for synthesis with both reading and understanding skills. Also in all your interventions you expressed yourself in such positive and respectful fashion, that we welcome you to please keep participating with such delightful and witted insights for the maximum pleasure of our audiences.
Sense? You sense?
Ok, the general trading of personal barbs on this thread is both off-topic and inappropriate. Please refrain from snide jabs and personal insults in discussions, and keep discussions focused on the issue or topic at hand, thanks
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