Illumination Model

Why Lighting?
 Color is a fundamental attribute of our viewing
experience. The perception of color arises from light
energy entering our visual system.
 This complex process is relevant to computer
graphics because a realistic image is one that seems
indistinguishable from the light energy coming from a
real scene.
 If we don’t have lighting effects nothing looks three
dimensional!
Why Lighting? (cont…)
 Basics of Reflected Light
 The colours that we perceive are determined by the
nature of the light reflected from an object
 For example, if white
light is shone onto a
green object most
wavelengths are
absorbed, while green
light is reflected from Colours
Absorbed
the object
 Basics of Reflected Light
 The amount of incident light reflected by a surface
depends on the type of material
 Shiny materials reflect more of the incident light and
dull surfaces absorb more of the incident light
 For transparent surfaces some of the light is also
transmitted through the material
Components of Reflections

Ambient – surface exposed to indirect light reflected from nearby objects.

Diffuse – reflection from incident light with equal intensity in all directions.
Depends on surface properties.
Specular – near total of the incident light around reflection angle.

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 Real Lights and Reflection
 Real lights are complicated
 Sun light, iridescent bulbs, fluorescent bulbs
 Different spectra in different directions
 Again, pretty complicated
 May be described by bidirectional reflectance distribution
function (BRDF)
 Besides
 The incoming light can come from a source, or bouncing
off another object, or after multiple bounces
 Sources can be extended
 Multiple interactions between light and surface
 Illumination Model
 An illumination model, also called a lighting model is
used to calculate the intensity of light that we
should see at a given point on the surface of an
object.
 Done by simulating some light attributes
 Can be
 Local illumination
 Global illumination

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 Illumination Model
 Local illumination
 Models only the direct illumination from the source
 Does not consider light reaching after bouncing off other objects
 Only consider the light, the
observer position, and the
object material properties

 Global illumination
 take into account the interaction
of light from all the surfaces in
the scene

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 Things to Model
 Light sources
 What color, intensity, lines through space
 Reflection of light off surfaces
 How much light reflected in each direction
 How are color and intensity changed

 Life on a surface
L: direction to light
N: normal vector
R: reflection of light about normal
V: direction to viewer (i.e. reflection
direction of interest)
 Point Light Sources
 Simplest model we can use for a light source
 Defined by:
 The position (x,y,z) of the light
 The RGB values for the colour of the light
 Radiates equal intensity in all direction

L = Plight - Psurface
 Directional Light Sources
 A large light source, like the sun, can be modelled as
a point light source
 However, it will have very little directional effect
 i.e. All light rays are considered parallel

Specified by:
• direction (x,y,z)
• intensity (r,g,b)

L = -direction
 Intensity Attenuation
 As light moves from a light source its intensity
diminished
 At any distance d away from the light source the
intensity diminishes by a factor of 1
d2
 This means that
 a surface close to the light source (small d) receives a
higher incident intensity from the source than a distant
surface (large d).
 Intensity Attenuation
 However, using the factor 1 2 does not produce very good
d
results so we use something different
 We use instead in inverse quadratic function of the form:

 1.0, source at infinity


f radial d    1 .
attenuation  a  a d  a d 2 , local source
 0 1 2
 A user can then fiddle or manipulates with the coefficients ao,
a1, and a2 , to obtain a variety of lighting effects
 The value of the constant term ao can be adjusted to
prevent f(d) from becoming too large when d is very
small.
 Spotlights
 To turn a point light source into a spotlight we simply
add a vector direction and an angular limit θl
 If Vlight and Vobj are the unit vector
 Then
Vobj Vlight  cos

 If this angle is inside the light’s angular limit then the

object is within the spotlight
 Spotlights - Angular Intensity Attenuation
 Points outside the cone are not illuminated (stay in
dark).

 Angular attenuation is:


 1.0, source not a spotlight

fangular     0.0, Vobj  Vlight  cos   cos 
attenuation 
 
a otherwise
 Vobj  Vlight ,

a is a constant
 Phong Model
 Phong model is an empirical model developed in 1973
by Phong Bui Tuong
 Simple and fast method for calculating surface intensity
at a given point
 Gives reasonably good results and is used in most
graphics systems
 The important components are:
 Ambient light
 Diffuse reflection
 Specular reflection
 Emissive light
 For the most part we will consider only monochromatic
light sources
 Ambient Light
 A surface that is not exposed
to direct light may still be lit
up by reflections from other
nearby objects – ambient
light
 The total reflected light from
a surface is the sum of the
contributions from light
sources and reflected
light
 Ambient Light
 To incorporate background light Phong model simply
set a general brightness level for a scene
 This approximates the global diffuse reflections
(inter-reflections) from various surfaces within the
scene
 This light intensity is simply denoted by Ia,
 It is
 Independent of the light positions or surface directions
 Independent of location of viewer
 Has no direction
 Diffuse Reflection
 Surfaces that are rough or grainy tend to reflect light
in all directions
 This scattered light is called diffuse reflection
 This type of reflection is called Lambertian Reflection
(thus, Lambertian surfaces)
 The brightness of the surface is independent of the
observer position (since the light is reflected in all
direction equally)
 Diffuse Reflection (cont…)
 Surface’s material property:
 A parameter kd is set for each surface
 kd determines the fraction of light that is to be scattered as
diffuse reflections from that surface
 This parameter is known as the diffuse-reflection
coefficient or the diffuse reflectivity
 kd is assigned a value between 0.0 and 1.0
 0.0: dull surface that absorbs almost all light
 1.0: shiny surface that reflects almost all light
 Diffuse Reflection – Ambient Light
 For background lighting effects we can assume that
every surface is fully illuminated by the scene’s
ambient light Ia
 Therefore the ambient contribution to the diffuse
reflection is given as:
I ambdiff  kd I a
 Ambient light alone is not enough to render a scene
or very uninteresting so we need some other lights in
a scene as well
 Diffuse Reflection (cont…)
 When a surface is illuminated by a light source, the
amount of incident light depends on the orientation of
the surface relative to the light source direction

N θ = angle of incidence

Il
 
Incident
light
 Diffuse Reflection (cont…)
 So the amount of incident light on a surface is given
as:
I l ,incident  I l cos
 So we can model the diffuse
reflections as: I l ,diff  k d I l ,incident

 k d I l cos

 if N and L are unit vector, N  L  cos

k d I l ( N  L ) if N  L  0
I l ,diff 
 0 if N  L  0
 Combining Ambient And Incident Diffuse Reflections

 To combine the diffuse reflections arising from

ambient and incident light most graphics packages
use two separate diffuse-reflection coefficients:
 ka for ambient light
 kd for incident light
 The total diffuse reflection equation for a single point
source can then be given as:

k a I a  k d I l ( N  L ) if N  L  0
I diff 
 ka I a if N  L  0
Examples
 Specular Reflection
 Additionally to diffuse reflection we see a
highlight, or bright spot, on objects (such
as polished metal, apple ...) at certain
viewing directions.
 This phenomenon, called specular
reflection,
 It is the result of total, or near total reflection
of the incident light in a concentrated region
around the specular reflection angle.
 Specular Reflection (cont…)
 A perfect mirror reflects light only in the specular-
reflection direction
 Other objects exhibit specular reflections over a finite
range of viewing positions around vector R
 Specular Reflection Model
 The Phong model sets the intensity of specular reflection as
proportional to the angle between the viewing vector and the
specular reflection vector

 So, the specular reflection intensity is proportional to the

angle Φ can be varied between 0° and 90° so that cosΦ
varies from 1.0 to 0.0

 The specular-reflection exponent, ns is determined by the

type of surface we want to display
 Shiny surfaces have a very large value (>100)
 Rough surfaces would have a value near 1
 Specular Reflection Model
 The effect of ns on the angular range in which we can
expect to see specular reflections
 Specular Reflection Model
 For some materials the amount of specular reflection
depends heavily on the angle of the incident light
 Fresnel’s Laws of Reflection describe in great detail
how specular reflections behave
 However, we don’t need to worry about this and
instead approximate the specular effects with a
constant specular reflection coefficient ks
 Specular Reflection Model
 So the specular reflection intensity is given as:
I l , spec  k s I l cos 
ns

V  R  cos
 Remembering that
We can say:

k s I l (V  R) ns if V  R  0 and N  L  0
I l , spec 
 0.0 if V  R  0 or N  L  0
Example
Calculating Reflection Vector

Since L and N are normalized

N   L cos θ  cos θ
N   N cos θ  ( N .L )N
U  N  L
R  L  2U  2N  L N  L
 Half way Vector
 An alternative way of computing Phong specular
lighting is:
I l , spec  k s I l ( N  H ) ns

 H (halfway vector): halfway between V and L

LV
H
|LV|
 Why?
 Efficient computations

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 Combining Diffuse & Specular Reflections
 For a single light source we can combine the effects
of diffuse and specular reflections simply as follows:

I  I diff  I spec
k a I a  k d I l ( N  L)  k s I l (V  R) ns
Example
Example

Ambient Diffuse

Final
Specular Image
 Emission
 Some objects are self-luminous
 Light intensity due to emission is measured as –

I e  ki

k i  coefficien t of the object' s intrinsic intensity

 Therefore,
I  I diff  I spec  I e
 Multiple Light Sources
 We can place any number of light sources in a scene
 We compute the diffuse and specular reflections as
sums of the contributions from the various sources

 
n
I  I ambdiff   I l ,diff  I l ,spec
l 1

 
n
k a I a   I l kd N  L   k s V  R 
ns

l 1
 Adding Intensity Attenuation
 To incorporate radial and angular intensity
attenuation into our model we simply adjust our
equation to take these into account
 So, light intensity is now given as:

 
I  I ambdiff   f l ,radatten f l ,angattenI l ,diff  I l , spec 
n

l 1

 where fradatten and fangatten are as discussed

previously
RGB Colour Considerations
 For an RGB colour description each intensity
specification is a three element vector
 For each light source: I l  I lR , I lG , I lB 

 Similarly all parameters are given as vectors:

ka  kaR , kaG , kaB  k s  k sR , k sG , k sB 
k d  k dR , k dG , k dB 
 Each component of the surface colour is then
calculated with a separate expression
I lR ,diff  kdR I lR ( N  L) I lB ,diff  kdB I lB ( N  L)
I lG ,diff  kdG I lG ( N  L)
 Summary
 To create realistic (or even semi-realistic) looking
scenes we must model light correctly
 To successfully model lighting effects we need to
consider:
 Ambient light
 Diffuse reflections
 Specular reflections
 Nate Robin’s Tutorial

Nate Robin’s OpenGL Tutorials available at: http://users.polytech.unice.fr/~buffa/cours/synthese_image/DOCS/

www.xmission.com/Nate/tutors.html