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Comment by hakonjdjohnsen

2 days ago

This, very much this!

I do research in a subfield of optics called nonimaging optics (optics for energy transfer, e.g. solar concentrators or lighting systems). We typically use these optical design applications, and your observations are absolutely correct. Make some optical design software that uses GPUs for raytracing, reverse-mode autodiff for optimization, sprinkle in some other modern techniques you may blow these older tools out of the water.

I am hoping to be able to get some projects going in this direction (feel free to reach out if anyone are interested).

PS: I help organize an academic conference my subfield of optics. We run a design competition this year [1,2]. Would be super cool if someone submits a design that they made by drawing inspiration from modern computer graphics tools (maybe using Mitsuba 3, by one of the authors of this book?), instead of using our classical applications in the field.

[1] https://nonimaging-conference.org/competition-2025/upload/

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hakonjdjohnsen

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bradrn  1 day ago

> I am hoping to be able to get some projects going in this direction (feel free to reach out if anyone are interested).

This does sound interesting! I’ve just finished a Masters degree, also in non-imaging optics (in my case oceanographic lidar systems). I have experience in raytracing for optical simulation, though not quite in the same sense as optical design software. How should I contact you to learn more?

accurrent  1 day ago

Sounds a bit like https://github.com/mitsuba-renderer/mitsuba2

  • hakonjdjohnsen  1 day ago

    Yes, exactly. I have not looked at Mitsuba 2, but Mitsuba 3 is absolutely along these lines. It is just starting to be picked up by some of the nonimaging/illumination community, e.g. there was a paper last year from Aurele Adam's group at TU Delft where they used it for optimizing a "magic window" [1]. Some tradeoffs and constraints are a bit different when doing optical design versus doing (inverse) rendering, but it definitely shows what is possible.

    [1] https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.515422