A Copula-Based BRDF Model

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a novel approach for modeling surface reflection. We focus on using a family of probability distributions called Archimedean copulas as BRDF models. The Archimedean representation has an attractive property in that the multivariate distributions are characterized by their marginal distributions through a single univariate function only. It is shown that the proposed model meets the reciprocity property of reflection. Based on measured BRDF data we demonstrate that the proposed approach provides a good approximation to BRDF. Empirical comparisons are made with some classically used BRDF models.