Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation

Every time I see stuff like this it makes me think about optical design software.

There are applications (Zemax, for example) that are used to design optical systems (lens arrangements for cameras, etc). These applications are eye-wateringly expensive-- like similar in pricing to top-class EDA software licenses.

With the abundance GPU's and modern UI's, I wonder how much work would be involved for someone to make optical design software that blows away the old tools. It would be ray-tracing, but with interesting complications like accounting for polarization, diffraction, scattering, fluorescence, media effects beyond refraction like like birefringence and stuff like Kerr and Pockels, etc.

I predict PBR is going to fall to neural rendering. Diffusion models have been shown to learn all of the rules of optics and shaders, and they're instructable and generalizable. It's god mode for physics and is intuitive for laypersons to manipulate.

We're only at the leading edge of this, too.