How did Toshi and Yoshi develop Rigid Gems to be able to recreate the stunning glimmer and luster of gemstones in CGI?
Rigid Gems was made to be simpler and easier to use than other ray-tracing software. It's generally aimed at making a wide variety of scenes with different ambient light look stunning. The Rigid Gems software uses a customized rendering technique specifically tailored to render the sparkle, light refraction, and light reflection in gemstones, and the level of translucence and light reflection and refraction on the facets of the gemstones—including the cut of the gemstone—can all be easily toggled.
Circle of Gems on Black Marble
Multifaceted Triangular Gem
Through more than a decade of trial and error, Toshi and Yoshi found issues that could've been improved and tested their software over and over to clear them one by one.
Just like when you pull a chain with both hands and it breaks at the weakest point, they've worked diligently to find the weak links in their coding and continuously improve on them. It was a long and arduous process, but not without its rewards.
When it comes to digitally recreating gemstone jewelry, even a single problematic point can cause the appearance of the gemstone to be hindered dramatically. Because the Fukurono's have such a sharp eye for how light hits the surfaces of gems, they used their persistence and patience to their advantage to perfect Rigid Gems while taking on a lot of other projects.
Not all people in the graphics industry know about the kinds of issues that Toshi and Yoshi have had to overcome in order to get a gemstone simulator like Rigid Gems in its current state, and some engineers struggle to comprehend real-time ray tracing.
That's why we're going on the record now to say: Rigid Gems is rendered in real time.
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