A Practical Framework for Sharing and Rendering Real-World Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Functions

The utilization of real-world materials has been hindered by a lack of standards for sharing and interpreting measured data. This paper presents an XML representation and an Open Source C library to support bidirectional scattering distribution functions (BSDFs) in data-driven lighting simulation and rendering applications.The library provides for the efficient representation, query, and Monte Carlo sampling of arbitrary BSDFs in amodel-free framework. Currently, we support two BSDF data representations: one using a fixed subdivision of thehemisphere, and one with adaptive density. The fixed type has advantages for certain matrix operations, while theadaptive type can more accurately represent highly peaked data. We discuss advanced methods for data-driven BSDF rendering for both types, including the proxy of detailed geometry to enhance appearance and accuracy. We also present an advanced interpolation method to reduce measured data into these standard representations. We end with our plan for future extensions and sharing of BSDF data.