Comparative Study of Layered Material Models

The accurate reproduction of layered materials is an important part of physically-based rendering applications. Since no exact analytical model exists for any configuration of layer stacks, available models make approximations. In this paper, we propose to evaluate them with a numerical approach: we simulate BRDFs and BTDFs for layered materials in order to compare existing models against a common reference. We show that: (1) no single model always outperforms the others and (2) significant differences remain between simulated and modeled materials. We analyse the reasons for these discrepancies and introduce immediate corrections.