Lewis Taylor

Yeah potentially. I think caustics can get so art directed to the point it's why we mostly don't bother unless it's very obvious it's needed. There are times you want to reduce or remove them. I think almost no-one cares about super physical accuracy so they should indeed be some approximation. To do them properly you need di-directional tracing, this I cannot see any renderer supporting as it's just too difficult to solve efficiently. The closest thing you have is renderman's VCM mode, but it is very slow.

I'm all for a fast solution that is controllable.
They sure are a pretty effect.

L

Caustics represents a fraction of the user base, it's incredibly hard to solve in a brute force uni-directional path tracer. Octane has a great cheat/approximation method that works really well, I think that is honestly the better path for this if you need speed.

I can see it being addressed, but there are many more higher use issues/features that would probably come before caustics in XPU.

L

raincole

lewis_T
I would just be using a ramp to be honest. As far as "knowing which bit of the ramp is controlling what
bit of your noodle, you can just have curveu driving a color ramp. Then it's easy to see which bit is aligned
visually.

For one single curve maybe. But if you have multiple curves drawn in one single Curve SOP, using ramp(s!) to control pscale is abysmal UX...

Your screen grab showed one curve.