Comparing BRDF Models: Representation of Measured BRDF
Joo-Haeng Lee, Sung‐Soo Kim, Hyungjun Park · Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering · 2009
BRDF (bidirectional reflectance distribution function) is critical in realistic simulation of material appearances since it models the directional characteristics of reflection of light. Although many BRDF models have been proposed so far, it is still not easy to find one specific model that could represent all the reflection properties of real materials such as generalized diffusion, off-specular reflection, Fresnel effect, and back scattering. In this paper, we compare three BRDF models including B-spline volume BRDF (BVB), Cook-Torrance, and Lafortune in their ability to represent the measured BRDF data for physically-based rendering. We show that B-spline volume BRDF surpass the others in quality of data fitting and rendering, especially for materials without specular reflections.