Wavelet encoding of BRDFs for real-time rendering

Luc Claustres (1) , Loic Barthe (1) , Mathias Paulin (1)

1 IRIT-VORTEX - Visual Objects from Reality To Expression

Acquired data often provides the best knowledge of a material's bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF). Its integration into most real-time rendering systems requires both data compression and the implementation of the decompression and filtering stages on contemporary graphics processing units (GPUs). This paper improves the quality of real-time per-pixel lighting on GPUs using a wavelet decomposition of acquired BRDFs. Three-dimensional texture mapping with indexing allows us to efficiently compress the BRDF data by exploiting much of the coherency between hemispherical data. We apply built-in hardware filtering and pixel shader flexibility to perform filtering in the full 4D BRDF domain. Anti-aliasing of specular highlights is performed via a progressive level-of-detail technique built upon the multiresolution of the wavelet encoding. This technique increases rendering performance on distant surfaces while maintaining accurate appearance of close ones.

Mots clés: brdf; wavelet; real time rendering

Domaines: Synthèse d'image et réalité virtuelle [cs.GR]

Luc Claustres, Loic Barthe, Mathias Paulin. Wavelet encoding of BRDFs for real-time rendering. Graphics Interface, May 2007, Montréal, Canada. pp.169-176, ⟨10.1145/1268517.1268546⟩. ⟨hal-01518547⟩