A Signal-Processing Framework for Reflection—Part 1 Reflection as Convolution.pdf

A Signal-Processing Framework for Reflection—Part 1: Reflection as Convolution Ravi Ramamoorthi, Columbia University? Pat Hanrahan, Stanford University Abstract We present a signal-processing framework for analyzing the reflected light field from a homogeneous convex curved surface under distant illumination. This analysis is of theoretical interest in both graphics and vision and is also of practical importance in many computer graphics problems—for instance, in determining lighting distributions and bidirectional reflectance distribution functions (BRDFs), in rendering with environment maps, and in image-based rendering. It is well known that under our assumptions, the reflection operator behaves qualitatively like a convolution. In this first part of the paper, we formalize these notions, showing that the reflected light field can be thought of in a precise quantitative way as obtained by convolving the lighting and BRDF, i.e. by filtering the incident illumination using the BRDF. Mathematically, we are able to express the frequency- space coefficients of the reflected light field as a product of the spherical harmonic coefficients of the illumination and the BRDF. These results are of practical importance in determining the well- posedness and conditioning of problems in inverse rendering—estimation of BRDF and lighting parameters from real photographs. Our mathematical analysis also has implications for forward rendering—especially the efficient rendering of objects under complex lighting conditions specified by environment maps. Keywords: Reflection, Illumination, BRDF, Signal Processing, Spherical Harmonics, Fourier Analysis, Environment Maps, Inverse Rendering, ?(ravir@ hanrahan@) Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, 1214 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027. 917-375-8378, 212-666-0140 (fax) 1 1 Introduction The study of reflection is of fundamental importance in both computer graphics and vision. In computer graphics, the interaction between t