Material Models for Distribution Ray Tracing and Monte Carlo Radiosity The PICTURE Gallery

This page shows a few example scenes to illustrate the differences between various material models introduced in the course of my work (appendix B "Colour Plates", pp 93-97). Besides, some scenes have been computed using both adaptive ray tracing and distribution ray tracing to compare the results. All ray tracing images have been computed on a Pentium/100 machine with computation times ranging from a few minutes (plate I) to almost 15 hours (plates VI and VIII).

Plate I. Red spheres rendered with an adaptive ray tracer using four different surface models (starting from the top left): Lambertian emitter, Lambertian reflector, Phong reflector and a combination of the last two (70% Lambert, 30% Phong). (view source)

Plate II. The same scene as above, but a distribution ray tracer was used to visualise it this time. Note, that the light-emitting sphere was only used to illuminate the scene, a Lambertian emitter cannot simulate a gleaming object; thus it appears to be black. (view source)

Plate III. The light reddish-white sphere is a combination of a Lambert emitter (50%) and a Lambert Reflector (50%). The others are an ideal transparent surface (no refraction), a Phong refractor and a combination of Phong reflector (30%) and refractor (70%). (view source)

Plate IV. Image mapping was used for the labels, solid texturing for the wooden walls and the marble boxes. The teapots have Cook-Torrance surfaces using the Beckmann microfacet distribution with roughness m=0.1, 0.25, 0.4, respectively.	(view source)

Plate V. Adaptively ray traced scene with two lamps, a ball and a glass. Different surfaces composed of diffuse, specular and refractive components have been used. The ball combines a specular Phong reflector with a solid marble texture for instance. (view source)

Plate VI. Distribution ray tracing: Not only the shadows appear smooth now, but also the mirror shows imperfect blurred reflection which was achieved by using a "smooth-reflector" surface. (view source)

Plate VII. This image demonstrates material interpolation: The helix's material changes linearly to its winding from a purely diffuse checkered texture (2D-texturing) to a highly specular red Phong-surface.	(view source)

Plate VIII. This is the same helix-scene as before but it was rendered with a distribution ray tracer using imperfect refraction this time.	(view source)

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