Curvature-based shading of translucent materials, such as human skin

Abstract

The paper introduces a new approximate method for rendering translucent materials. We represent the surface around a point to be rendered in Monge's form using principal curvatures. The subsurface reflectance equation in the dipole diffusion approximation [Jensen et al. 2001] is then integrated over the surface. The outgoing radiance at the point is expressed as a function of principal curvatures and light vector components along the principal directions. This function can be precomputed as a 2D lookup table, which can be stored as a texture image. The paper presents preliminary results of our work on implementation of the model described.