Lighting II: specular reflection, generalized lighting models

CS 248 - Introduction to Computer Graphics
Autumn Quarter, 2003
Marc Levoy
Lecture notes for Tuesday, December 2 (finished on Thursday, December 4)

Table of contents:

Press here for the Powerpoint slides about measuring BRDFs.


Note: If vertex normals are passed into the rendering pipeline along with vertex coordinates, and they can be assumed to be pre-normalized, then the rendering pipeline doesn't need to perform any square roots at all.

OpenGL natively supports only Gouraud (i.e. intensity) interpolation. Phong (i.e. normal vector) interpolation is not supported natively, but it can be implemented (during rasterization) using the flexible shading architecture available in most modern hardware accelerators. Angle interpolation would be harder to implement. However, assuming modest changes in normal vector direction from vertex to vertex, the visual difference between normal and angle interpolation is small.
levoy@cs.stanford.edu
Copyright © 2003 Marc Levoy
Last update: November 25, 2003 03:07:46 PM