Display of rays and reflection

  • 6 July 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 380 views

Hello,


another dummy question. Reminder: I'm a new user, have ZOS 15 and modify an existing model.


So I have some reflective surfaces defined by a coating, e.g. MYCOATING defined in the Coating Catalog by:


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Coating Name:    MYCOATING (IDEAL)

S-Polarization:

   T, tr, ti:        0.13210000        0.36345564        0.00000000

   R, rr, ri:        0.86790000        0.93161151        0.00000000

           A:        0.00000000

         TIR:        1.00000000

P-Polarization:

   T, tr, ti:        0.13210000        0.36345564        0.00000000

   R, rr, ri:        0.86790000        0.93161151        0.00000000

           A:        0.00000000

         TIR:        1.00000000

This coating adds a pi phase shift upon reflection from high to low index.


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But when I display the NSC Shaded Model, there is no reflection on these surfaces whereas I excepect about 87 % of the rays to be reflected. So I have two questions:



1. Is the reflective properties taken into acount in this NSC Shadefd Model display? In other words, should I see reflected rays (and thus did I make a mistake somewhere, e.g. I used the coating on the wrong face of my object or the like) or are these properties ignored by the interactive display?



2. Is there a way to display the 5e4 rays actually used for the simulation so I can check that the reflection properties are correct in the simulation? Or is there another way to chack it out?



Regards


2 replies

Userlevel 5
Badge +2

Hello Christophe,


Thanks for your question here!


Regarding your first question, yes, the Shaded Model does take the coating properties into account, but please make sure to check the 'Use Polarization' box to consider polarization effects.



You should see reflected rays in this way.


If you have any doubts about using the correct face of the object, you can use the 'View Current Object' tool for visualization



You may find more info on how to define materials and coatings and how to apply them in the following knowledgebase articles:


How to define metal materials in OpticStudio


How to model a partially reflective and partially scattering surface


 


Regarding your second question about displaying a huge number of rays, currently the number of Layout rays is maximized in 2e4 rays. This limitation is directly in the NSC editor. However, you can display more rays by using a ray database saved in a ZRD file. To do so, you first need to trace rays and save the results into a ZRD file, then you can display exactly the rays used for the simulation by selecting the saved ZRD file for the Ray Database in the Settings of the Shaded Model.


If you have any further questions please let us know!


Best,


Csilla

That works fine, thanks a lot.







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