Experimental Analysis of BRDF Models

The Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) describes the appearance of a material by its interaction with light at a surface point. A variety of analytical models have been proposed to represent BRDFs. However, analysis of these models has been scarce due to the lack of high-resolution measured data. In this work we evaluate several well-known analytical models in terms of their ability to fit measured BRDFs. We use an existing high-resolution data set of a hundred isotropic materials and compute the best approximation for each analytical model. Furthermore, we have built a new setup for efficient acquisition of anisotropic BRDFs, which allows us to acquire anisotropic materials at high resolution. We have measured four samples of anisotropic materials (brushed aluminum, velvet, and two satins). Based on the numerical errors, function plots, and rendered images we provide insights into the performance of the various models. We conclude that for most isotropic materi...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: RT
• Authors: Addy Ngan, Frédo Durand, Wojciech Matusik
• Keywords: Analytical Model, Anisotropic Brdfs, Anisotropic Materials, Computer Graphics, RT 2005