We present a novel method of simulating wave effects in graphics using ray-based renderers with a new function: the Wave BSDF (Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function). Reflections from neighboring surface patches represented by local BSDFs are mutually independent. However, in many surfaces with wavelengthscale microstructures, interference and diffraction requires a joint analysis of reflected wavefronts from neighboring patches. We demonstrate a simple method to compute the BSDF for the entire microstructure, which can be used independently for each patch. This allows us to use traditional ray-based rendering pipelines to synthesize wave effects of light and sound. We exploit the Wigner Distribution Function (WDF) to create transmissive, reflective, and emissive BSDFs for various diffraction phenomena in a physically accurate way. In contrast to previous methods for computing interference, we circumvent the need to explicitly keep track of the phase of the wave by using BSDFs that include positive as well as negative coefficients. We describe and compare the theory in relation to well understood concepts in rendering and demonstrate a straightforward implementation. In conjunction with standard raytracers, such as PBRT, we demonstrate wave effects for a range of scenarios such as multi-bounce diffraction materials, holograms and reflection of high frequency surfaces.

We propose a technique for cheap and efficient acquisition of mesostructure normal maps from specularities, which only requires a simple LCD monitor and a digital camera. Coded illumination enables us to capture subtle surface details with only a handful of images. In addition, our method can deal with heterogeneous surfaces, and high albedo materials. We are able to recover highly detailed mesostructures, which was previously only possible with an expensive hardware setup.

Abstract. We propose a technique for gloss and normal map acquisition of finescale specular surface details, or mesostructure. Our main goal is to provide an efficient, easily applicable, but sufficiently accurate method to acquire mesostructures. We therefore employ a setup consisting of inexpensive and accessible components, including a regular computer screen and a digital still camera. We extend the Gray code based normal map acquisition approach of Francken et al. [1] which utilizes a similar setup. The quality of the original method is retained and without requiring any extra input data we are able to extract per pixel glossiness information. In the paper we show the theoretical background of the method as well as results on real-world specular mesostructures.

We propose an efficient technique for normal map acquisition, using a cheap and easy to build setup. Our setup consists solely of off-the-shelf components, such as an LCD screen, a digital camera and a linear polarizer filter. The LCD screen is employed as a linearly polarized light source emitting gradient patterns, whereas the digital camera is used to capture the incident illumination reflected off the scanned object's surface. Also, by exploiting the fact that light emitted by an LCD screen has the property of being linearly polarized, we use the filter to surpress any specular highlights. Based on the observed Lambertian reflection of only four different light patterns, we are able to obtain a detailed normal map of the scanned surface. Overall, our techniques produces convincing results, even on weak specular materials.

We present a method to efficiently acquire specular mesostructure normal maps, only making use of off-the-shelf components, such as a digital still camera, an LCD screen and a linear polarizing filter. Where current methods require a specialized setup, or a considerable number of input images, we only need a cheap setup to maintain a similar level of quality. We verify the presented theory on real world examples, and provide a ground truth evaluation on photorealistic synthetic data.