Deep image-based Adaptive BRDF Measure

Abstract

Efficient and accurate measurement of the bi-directional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) plays a key role in high quality image rendering and physically accurate sensor simulation. However, obtaining the reflectance properties of a material is both time-consuming and challenging. This paper presents a novel method for minimizing the number of samples required for high quality BRDF capture using a gonio-reflectometer setup. Taking an image of the physical material sample as input a lightweight neural network first estimates the parameters of an analytic BRDF model, and the distribution of the sample locations. In a second step we use an image based loss to find the number of samples required to meet the accuracy required. This approach significantly accelerates the measurement process while maintaining a high level of accuracy and fidelity in the BRDF representation.