Appearance Based Rendering
In terms of physics oriented research, much of Meyer's
research effort has been spent on the development of an appearance
based rendering system. The goal is to link industrial appearance
measurements for quantities such as gloss and metallic color to the
parameters of existing computer graphic reflection models. This will
allow the paint and coatings industries to utilize realistic image
synthesis as part of their design process in a manner similar to the
way that mechanical engineers have used computer graphics to solve
geometric design problems for the last twenty-five years. It will
also lead to computer graphic reflection models that are specified
in terms of visual surface appearance and not in terms of physical
material properties.
Several steps were taken towards the creation of an appearance based
rendering system. First a library of reflection models and a visualization
tool for examining the models' reflectance distributions were implemented.
To deal with reflectance data obtained from discrete hemispherical
measurements or from the evaluation of a reflectance model at specific
angular positions, a new method of generating random variates for
Monte Carlo ray tracing was developed. This technique was used to
render a picture of samples with known surface roughness and known
spectral reflectance distributions (Hunt
et al., 1999). Finally, a rendering system was produced that utilizes,
as input, appearance parameters such as gloss, haze, distinctness
of image, and metallic paint "flop" (Westlund
and Meyer, 2001; Meyer,
Westlund, and Walker, 2001).
|
|
