Physically-Based Patination

Although current photorealistic rendering techniques can produce very impressive images, the rendered objects are often too clean and shiny. Thus, the resulting images look unnatural. This paper proposes a physically-based model to simulate the appearance of patinas on ancient Chinese bronzes. Buried in the soil for thousands of years, many patinas are found on the surface of ancient bronzes as a result of the aging process and the physical and chemical conditions of the soil environment. The development of patinas is modulated herein by L-systems according to tendencies based on the environmental factors and object geometry. The tendencies are employed to represent the accumulative effect of all factors on patination. The proposed model can be extended to simulate a variety of metallic patinas including the ancient Chinese bronzes discovered at San-hsing-tui, Sichuan, China.