Fabricating microgeometry for custom surface reflectance

  • Authors:
  • Tim Weyrich;Pieter Peers;Wojciech Matusik;Szymon Rusinkiewicz

  • Affiliations:
  • University College London;University of Southern California;Adobe Systems, Inc.;Princeton University

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 papers
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

We propose a system for manufacturing physical surfaces that, in aggregate, exhibit a desired surface appearance. Our system begins with a user specification of a BRDF, or simply a highlight shape, and infers the required distribution of surface slopes. We sample this distribution, optimize for a maximally-continuous and valley-minimizing height field, and finally mill the surface using a computer-controlled machine tool. We demonstrate a variety of surfaces, ranging from reproductions of measured BRDFs to materials with unconventional highlights.