《A_new_class_of_BRDF_models_with_Fast_importance_sampling_-_Neumann》.pdf

A New Class of BRDF Models with Fast Importance Sampling László Neumann1 - Attila Neumann1 Budapest, Hungary December, 1996 Abstract We introduce a physically plausible mathematical model for a large class of BRDFs. The new model can be defined in a user-friendly way and it is as simple as the well-known Phong model, without any of its disadvantages. It gives a good visual approximation of a lot of practical materials: metals, plastics, ceramics, retro-reflective paints, anisotropic materials, etc. The new model includes the ideal diffuse model and ideal mirror as well, reflecting all of the incoming energy. Because of its illustrative properties it can be used easily in most commercial software and because of its low computational cost it is practical for VR. The model is based on a special basic BRDF definition, which fulfills the requirements of reciprocity and of energy conservation. We then construct the new model from this basic BRDFs with different weight functions. Finally we can - using 1D and 2D uniform random points - quickly generate directions following the distribution of the reflected energy. CR Descriptors: I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism; I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation. Additional Key Words: rendering, reflection models, anisotropy, retro-reflective models, BRDF, albedo, Monte Carlo, importance sampling Introduction A central problem in photorealistic computer graphics is the study of the illumination models (optical material models) and among these the research of the Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions