Analytic Approximations for Light Transport in Volumetric Materials
Tenth Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications,
October 2002
Authors
Abstract
The appearance of materials found in nature and natural phenomena has
been studied extensively in many scientific fields. Mathematical
description of physical events contributing to complex appearance of
these materials is hard. Solving these equations that give you an
answer about how the material looks like if illuminated by a light
source is equally hard. In this project, I describe several phenomena
such as opposition effect (explains why the Moon is so much brighter
when it is full), soft appearance of biological materials and
translucency. Simple approximations are presented that allow artists
and non-technical users easy access to complicated phenomena that
would be otherwise much harder to achieve the desired appearance.
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