A physical rendering model for human teeth
Sudarshanram Shetty, Mike J. Bailey · 2010
This paper introduces a layered model for rendering human teeth, to be used in photorealistic rendering of humans for games and animations. While the lighting responses of teeth have been studied in the dental industry ([Joiner 2004], [Brodbelt et al 1981], [Zijp and ten Bosch 1993]) for the production of realistic-looking dentures, to our knowledge this is the first study of its type in computer graphics for the production of realistic renderings. Human teeth exhibit translucency and are characterized by complex light interaction. From a rendering perspective, we make use of a bank of sliders (Figure 2) to vary optical properties at runtime and achieve desired rendering effects, including aging effects as shown in Figure 1. We also make use of hand drawn distribution maps for different layers rather than texture maps to achieve diffuse coloring.