Realistic Materials and Lighting in Real-Time Rendering

In my diploma thesis I have done research on the simulation of realistic materials in real-time rendering. The result is a new technique that involves the factorization of BRDF-based lighting in a global illumination scenario. The paper based on the diploma thesis has been published at Siggraph 2002.

Abstract of the "Homomorphic Factorization of BRDF-based Lighting Computation"
Several techniques have been developed to approximate Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions (BRDF) with acceptable quality and performance for real-time applications. Based on the recently published "Homomorphic Factorization" by McCool et al. a new technique has been developed, that does not approximate the BRDF, but instead the full lighting computation of an isotropic BRDF in a global illumination scenario. With this method materials in complex lighting situations can be simulated with only two or more textures by using commonly available computation capabilities of current graphics hardware. This technique can also be considered as a generalized approach to several environment map prefiltering techniques.

Siggraph 2002 Paper co-authored with Prof. Andreas Kolb (English, PDF, 2.6 MB)
Diploma thesis (English, PDF, 5.1 MB, this PDF has been re-exported for compatibility with newer Acrobat Reader versions. For reference and improved image quality, the original PDF is still available)
Talk at Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik Saarbrücken, 28 November 2001 (English, Flash5, 232 KB)
Short presentation at University of Applied Sciences Wedel, 24 August 2001 (German, Flash5, 204 KB)

Example images:
Gold (Cook-Torrance BRDF), canyon environment map, rabbit model (PNG, 1024x768, 916 KB)
Copper (Cook-Torrance BRDF) and Modified Phong BRDF, Uffizi Gallery environment map, Car model (PNG, 1024x691, 501 KB)
Gold (Cook-Torrance BRDF), "painted" area light sources environment map, frog model (PNG, 900x600, 297 KB)
Modified Phong BRDF (highly specular), St. Peters environment map, shark model (PNG, 1024x768, 573 KB)

For further information contact: Lutz Latta (llatta at 2ld.de)

Some links to the topic:
Homomorphic Factorization of BRDFs by McCool et al.
Interactive Rendering with Arbitrary BRDFs using Separable Approximations, by Kautz et al.
Cornell BRDF Data
CUReT Columbia Utrecht BRDF Database

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