A Surface-based Appearance Model for Pennaceous Feathers

Abstract

The appearance of a real-world feather results from the complex interaction of light with its multi-scale biological structure, including the central shaft, branching barbs, and interlocking barbules on those barbs. In this work, we propose a practical surface-based appearance model for feathers. We represent the far-field appearance of feathers using a BSDF that implicitly represents the light scattering from the main biological structures of a feather, such as the shaft, barb and barbules. Our model accounts for the particular characteristics of feather barbs such as the non-cylindrical cross-sections and the scattering media via a numerically-based BCSDF. To model the relative visibility between barbs and barbules, we derive a masking term for the differential projected areas of the different components of the feather's microgeometry, which allows us to analytically compute the masking between barbs and barbules. As opposed to previous works, our model uses a lightweight representation of the geometry based on a 2D texture, and does not require explicitly representing the barbs as curves. We show the flexibility and potential of our appearance model approach to represent the most important visual features of several pennaceous feathers.