Render
Material Selection
With this dashboard, you can simulate the effects of light interaction with different materials, as commonly modelled in the field of computer graphics. When light hits an object, it behaves differently depending on the kind of material the object is made out of. The different windows here can give you an idea of the kind of behaviour light exhibits on different materials.
To begin, choose a material:
Material "Bumpiness"
Roughness Parameter
The graph on the left is a representation of the material's microfacet surface model. Microfacets are small, individual surface elements that make up the appearance of the material. This is visualized as a function that gives the distribution of microfacet normals with respect to the surface normal. The X-axis is the angle between the normal vector of the microfacet and the surface normal. The Y-axis represents the probability density of microfacets with that angle. The greater the variation of microfacet normals, the rougher the surface is.
Diffuse surfaces are usually modelled with Lambertian reflection which makes the reflected rays have the same probability in all directions. Thus, the probability density should be the same anywhere. Choose a non-diffuse surface to control its roughness.
For non-diffuse surfaces there are two commonly used distributions: GGX distribution and Beckmann distribution.
Light Behaviour Visualization
Control panel
Color Histogram
Count of pixels at each pixel value (0-255)