Efficient Rendering of Anisotropic Surfaces Using Computer Graphics Hardware

There are surprisingly many anisotropically reflecting objects in the real world. Some examples are brushed metal, cloth, CDs, and even many brands of paper. Despite the importance of anisotropic reflections in the real world, most of todays computer graphics systems cannot deal with them appropriately. This is particularly true for interactive and hardware-accelerated rendering systems, which is mostly due to the fact that so far there has been no model for simulating anisotropy with commonly available computer graphics hardware. In this paper we describe a novel approach for simulating anisotropic reflections on OpenGLbased architectures in real time. The rendering of an anisotropic surface with one light source is exactly as expensive as the rendering of the same surface with traditional texturing and lighting. It is therefore possible in real time, even on low-end workstations and PCs.