I couldn't describe what was wrong
The underwater light was the most frustrating part of PolyFish. I didn't know how to program it, and I didn't have a good way of communicating what was wrong.
The light in PolyFish was the most frustrating part of it, by a lot. Two problems stacked on each other: I didn’t know how to program this, and I didn’t have a great way of communicating what was wrong.
I would look at the screen, know in my gut the water looked fake, and have no vocabulary for why. It’s too flat? The light is doing the wrong thing? That is not much to hand somebody, person or AI.
We started with caustics, the rippling bands of light that move across the bottom of a pool. Got those working on the seafloor. Then we integrated god rays, the soft shafts coming down from the surface. Both were fine on their own and both still looked like a screensaver.
The magic really hit when the god ray patterns were integrated with the caustic pattern, and when the caustics got applied to all the objects instead of just the ground. That second one did most of it. The rippling light started playing across the fish and the plants and everything else.
The dolphins were the surprise. They lurk back in the darker water and before this they were basically invisible, shadow on shadow. Once the caustics hit them too they picked up a twinkle, a shimmer sliding over a shape you can only half see.
To quote Lebowski, it really tied the room together.
all PolyFish updates