Project Highlight
Advanced Mineral Optics & Cross-Polarized Photogrammetry
Engineering a specialized scanning rig and real-time shader suite capable of capturing translucent, highly refractive crystalline specimens with accurate optical dispersion and internal cleavage planes.
Developed in collaboration with Arkenstone Rare Minerals, this project pioneers specialized technical art and computer vision workflows to digitize, reconstruct, and interactively render ultra-rare mineral specimens, gemstones, and crystalline structures in Unreal Engine 5.
The Challenge of Scanning Translucent Crystals
Standard photogrammetry algorithms fail on minerals due to internal light refractions, specular caustics, and total internal reflection:
- Cross-Polarized Lighting Array: Custom camera rigs utilizing linear polarizing filters on both strobe illumination and camera lenses to eliminate surface glare and isolate true volumetric pigmentation.
- Micro-Photogrammetry: Macro-focus stacking pipelines capturing crystalline facets with sub-millimeter geometric precision.
Custom Physically Based HLSL Shading
Real-time gemstone rendering demands custom optical shader calculations beyond standard PBR:
- Wavelength-Dependent Chromatic Dispersion: Simulating Abbe number refraction splits in real-time ray-marched pixel shaders.
- Birefringence (Double Refraction): Reproducing the anisotropic optical splitting characteristic of calcite, tourmaline, and quartz crystal structures.
- Thin-Film Iridescence: Implementing spectral wave interference equations for iridescent mineral veneers and peacock ore.