Measuring microstructures using confocal laser scanning microscopy for estimating surface roughness

Abstract

Realistic image synthesis is an important research goal in computer graphics. One important factor to achieve this goal is a bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) that mainly governs an appearance of an object. Many BRDF models have therefore been developed. A physically-based BRDF based on microfacet theory [Cook and Torrance 1982] is widely used in many applications since it can produce highly realistic images. The microfacetbased BRDF consists of three terms; a Fresnel, a normal distribution, and a geometric functions. There are many analytical and approximate models for each of these terms.