CRI: CI-New: A Community Benchmarking Infrastructure for Birectional Reflectance Distribution Functions

该项目将支持测试平台应用程序套件的开发，用于评估材料外观模型，该模型描述了计算机图形学研究中光如何从表面反射。计算机图形学中的逼真图像合成需要精确模拟光在虚拟场景中的传输，从光源开始，从表面反射（基于材料模型），然后在相机结束。因此，材料模型是计算机图形系统的基本组成部分。测试平台将由三个组成部分组成：(1)现有材料模型的参考实现，(2)优化的材料模型参数库，以最佳地模拟真实材料的外观，以及计算新参数集以模拟新测量材料的工具，以及(3)在线和离线分析工具，以帮助研究人员和从业者选择合适的模型，并帮助开发更准确的材料模型。测试平台的一个关键特性是，当人们提交新的材料模型实现，或者模拟真实材料的新策略，或者用于评估模型准确性的新工具时，测试平台将根据测试平台中的所有模型和数据自动评估它们。这个关键特性是至关重要的，因为目前还没有一种很好的方法可以让研究人员详尽地将他们的工作与其他人进行比较，这减慢了研究和图形应用的进展；这个试验台将使比较新想法和旧想法变得容易得多，也使了解哪种模型在哪种实际情况下工作得最好，使外观建模对计算机图形学内外的研究人员和实践者来说更加便携和方便。该试验台将推动计算机图形学相关领域的研究，并通过支持虚拟现实应用、产品预可视化、电子商务、安全和培训模拟器等方面提高保真度和视觉真实感，直接造福社会。试验台将以存储库和网络界面的形式出现。该存储库将由首席研究员填充，包括双向反射分布函数（BRDF）、BRDF拟合策略和质量评估指标的初始参考实现集。然后，研究团体将能够向存储库中贡献这些组件的新进展。此外，拟合的BRDF参数模拟了所有BRDF模型的物理材料的反射行为，这些参数是用代码库中可用的每种不同BRDF拟合策略计算出来的，将在代码库和网络界面上公开提供。当新的算法或改进被记录在存储库中时，这些拟合的BRDF参数将被动态更新。网络界面将允许专家和从业者探索适合的BRDF参数，相应的可视化和质量评估，以推动他们的研究或产品开发。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will support the development of a testbed application suite for evaluating material appearance models that describe how light is reflected from surfaces in computer graphics research. Photorealistic image synthesis in computer graphics requires accurate simulation of light transport through a virtual scene starting from the light sources, reflecting off surfaces (based on the material models), before ending at the camera. Hence, material models are a fundamental component in computer graphics systems. The testbed will consist of three integral components: (1) reference implementations of existing material models, (2) a library of material model parameters optimized to best mimic the appearance of real materials, as well as tools to compute new sets of parameters to mimic newly measured materials, and (3) online and offline analysis tools to aid researchers and practitioners to select appropriate models and to aid in the development of more accurate material models. A key feature of the testbed is that when people submit new material model implementations, or new strategies for mimicking real materials, or new tools for assessing the accuracy of models, the testbed will automatically evaluate them against all models and data in the testbed. This key feature is critical as there currently does not exist a good way for researchers to exhaustively compare their work against others, which slows down progress in both research and graphics applications; the testbed will make it much easier to compare new ideas to old ones, as well as to understand which models work best in which practical situations, making appearance modeling more portable and accessible to researchers and practitioners in and outside computer graphics. This testbed will advance research in areas related to computer graphics, as well as directly benefit society through supporting improved fidelity and visual realism in virtual reality applications, product pre-visualization, e-commerce, safety and training simulators, etc.The testbed will be in the form of a repository and a web interface. The repository will be populated by the lead investigator with an initial set of reference implementations of bidirectional reflectance distribution functions (BRDFs), BRDF fitting strategies, and quality assessment metrics. The research community will then be able to contribute new advances to each of these components to the repository. In addition, fitted BRDF parameters that mimic the reflectance behavior of physical materials for all BRDF models, computed with each of the different BRDF fitting strategies available in the code repository will be made publicly available, both on the repository as well as through the web interface. These fitted BRDF parameters will be dynamically updated when new algorithms or improvements are recorded in the repository. The web interface will allow experts and practitioners to explore the fitted BRDF parameters, corresponding visualization, and quality assessments to drive their research or product development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.