Materials Overview

[WORK IN PROGRESS, so this is just nooding]

Ray tracing describes how rays from a light source interact with the objects in a scene. There are important differences in these interactions that depend on the object's material - just consider the difference between glass, a mirror, and wood. Thus, the ray tracing software is guided by a model of the object's material.

In many cases the object surface has a texture pattern, rather than being a solid material.

ISET3d represents the material properties of object by following the PBRT material models. Each of these models has multiple parameters. The combination of choosing a model and setting the parameters produces a variety of visual effects. This page is an overview, and we will add more examples in other pages.

PBRT has many built-in classes of materials you can use and customize, or you create your own. Some of the commonly used material types are Matte, Glass, Plastic, Mirror, and Uber. Uber doesn't describe any specific type of material, but is a good base on which to construct a custom material type. We demonstrate the creation of several different materials as well as setting and using their property values in the tutorial livescript: tls_materials.mlx.

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[Types of Reflections, although that is also in another page]

[Categories of materials]

(Uber, ...)