Physically-based rendering (PBR), sometimes referred to as physically-based materials or physically-based shading, is a 3D graphics rendering process that attempts to produce realistic images by accurately modeling light-matter interaction. Use this tag for questions about physically-based rendering, including shading, lighting, and materials.
Physically-based rendering (PBR), sometimes referred to as physically-based materials or physically-based shading, is a 3D graphics rendering process that attempts to produce realistic images by accurately modeling light-matter interaction. Different rendering engines may employ different methods and use different input parameters to target this goal.
Information
- Marmoset has articles on PBR theory and PBR in practice.
- There is a book on PBR by Matt Pharr and Greg Humphreys.
- There is a SIGGRAPH course on the topic.
- Unity has a primer on it.
- Unreal has documentation on it.
- CGCookie published an article on PBR in Blender's Viewport.
Examples
- Marmoset has a PBR-enabled WebGL Viewer.
- OpenSceneGraphJS has a PBR WebGL Demo.
Parameters
Most PBR systems include some means to set how rough a surface is, and how metallic a surface is. One parameter may have multiple effects, for example increasing the roughness may blur the reflection map and spread out the specular highlight at the same time. This example image is a composite of outputs from the OSGJS PBR demo linked above:
