Fabricating Microgeometry for Custom Surface Reflectance
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH), August 2009
From left: a user-designed highlight is converted to an optimized microfacet height field. A computer-controlled milling machine is used to manufacture the surface (30×30 facets, each approximately 1mm×1 mm), which exhibits the desired reflectance.
Abstract
We propose a system for manufacturing physical surfaces that, in aggregate, exhibit a desired surface appearance. Our system begins with a user specification of a BRDF, or simply a highlight shape, and infers the required distribution of surface slopes. We sample this distribution, optimize for a maximally-continuous and valley-minimizing height field, and finally mill the surface using a computer-controlled machine tool. We demonstrate a variety of surfaces, ranging from reproductions of measured BRDFs to materials with unconventional highlights.
Paper
Talk
Citation
Tim Weyrich, Pieter Peers, Wojciech Matusik, and Szymon Rusinkiewicz.
"Fabricating Microgeometry for Custom Surface Reflectance."
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH) 28(3), August 2009.
BibTeX
@article{Weyrich:2009:FMF,
author = "Tim Weyrich and Pieter Peers and Wojciech Matusik and Szymon
Rusinkiewicz",
title = "Fabricating Microgeometry for Custom Surface Reflectance",
journal = "ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH)",
year = "2009",
month = aug,
volume = "28",
number = "3"
}