Lecture 13: Global Illumination & Path Tracing (18)
pranavkolluri

I was wondering how one goes about trying to replicate a material like automotive paints. These tend almost have a volume to them when viewed in real life (the interaction with the light occurs below layers of clear or even colored lacquer, then it once again interacts with the clear coat as it exits). These also tend to exhibit orange peel to some extent. Even in games where vehicles are the primary focus, this seems to be s constant issue (the newest Forza motorsport for example, the paint is ok but not good). How do you been begin to try modeling this type of light interaction?

spegeerino

@pranav I don't know if this is an actual method that is used, but one thing I might try if I had to do that is to give the material many layers that are slightly apart from each other, and then when light strikes the material it first tries to reflect off the first layer, which succeeds with some probability, and then continues to the second layer if it fails, and so on. It might be quite computationally expensive to do this, though, and I'm not even sure it will recreate the desired effect. But just a thought I had when seeing your question.

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