Reflectance Models with Fast Importance Sampling

Abstract

We introduce a physically plausible mathematical model for a large class of BRDFs. The new model is as simple as the well-known Phong model, but eliminates its disadvantages. It gives a good visual approximation for many practical materials: coated metals, plastics, ceramics, retro-reflective paints, anisotropic and retro-reflective materials, etc. 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 virtual reality. The model is based on a special basic BRDF definition, which meets the requirements of reciprocity and of energy conservation. Then a class of BRDFs is constructed from this basic BRDF with different weight functions. The definition of such weight functions requires the user to specify the profile of the highlights, from which the weight function is obtained by derivation. It is also demonstrated how importance sampling can be used with the new BRDFs.