A Survey of BSDF Measurements and Representations

Abstract

Measuring and representing light reflection and transmission accurately are core to high fidelity visual simulation of materials. In this paper, we analyze state-of-the-art Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function (BSDF) measurements and models. We show that the most of the state-of- the-art BSDF models do not suggest a general solution for any surface class, from glasses to metals, isotropic to anisotropic materials, and daylight redirecting films. Furthermore, it’s shown that an accurate and dense BSDF acquisition is not a trivial task at especially some specific measurement angles, such as normal incidence and grazing angles. In this paper, we address the problem of finding a general solution for efficient BSDF measurement and representation. We also outline the main issues that do not allow the effective use of current BSDF representations. Finally, we suggest open research issues that need to be investigated in BSDF literature.