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Inherent limitations on specular highlight analysis

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Abstract

We analyse specular highlight modelling using microfacet-based physics illumination models. The ability to perform effective modelling is shown to depend on the ratio of the quantisation noise, ε, in the normal data to the object’s surface roughness parameter, m. We characterise how the accuracy degrades with increasing normal vector noise, when fitting is done in the Least Mean Squares sense. We show that it is not possible to accurately characterise sharp specular highlights, unless ε is very much less than m, and give examples of the practical implications of this theoretical result. We observe that the recently reported frequency-domain approaches can obscure this problem. We also present a novel characterisation of the importance of the geometric attenuation term in the microfacet models.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, 15 J. J. Thomson Ave, Cambridge, UK, CB3 0FD

    Lorcán Mac Manus & Neil Anthony Dodgson

  2. Advanced Technology Research Laboratories, Panasonic Corporation, 3-4 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, 619-0237, Japan

    Masahiro Iwasaki, Katsuhiro Kanamori & Satoshi Sato

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  1. Lorcán Mac Manus
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  2. Masahiro Iwasaki
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  3. Katsuhiro Kanamori
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  4. Satoshi Sato
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  5. Neil Anthony Dodgson
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Correspondence to Neil Anthony Dodgson.

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Mac Manus, L., Iwasaki, M., Kanamori, K. et al. Inherent limitations on specular highlight analysis. Vis Comput 25, 647–656 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-009-0331-7

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