How would one go about starting to create a bsdf vop? I'm looking through the docs and can only find how to add, multiply etc primitive bsdfs. But from the following thread on odforce it seems it's possible to start one from scratch? http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/9590-pbr-snack/page__hl__bsdf__fromsearch__1 [forums.odforce.net] I'm confused. Mainly since the docs point to the primitive bsdf's. http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini10.0/vex/pbr [sidefx.com]

Speaking of the primitive bsdf's… where are they in H11? thanks in advance. If it's possible the end goal I want to reach would be to implement the ggx lighting model.

Currently its not possible to create BSDFs on your own, either via VEX or the HDK. There has been talk that in future versions of Houdini this may be possible but the VEX language itself would need to be improved in order to facilitate this.

The shading BSDFs are here
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini11.0/vex/pbr [sidefx.com]

The full list is-

Shading BSDFs
ashikhmin
blinn
cone
diffuse
matchvex_blinn
matchvex_specular
phong
phonglobe
specular

Utility BSDFs
interpolate
lerp
switch

Wire/Curve BSDFs
wireblinn
wirediffuse

Volume BSDFs
isotropic
henyeygreenstein

If it's possible the end goal I want to reach would be to implement the ggx lighting model.

What's the ggx lighting model? Linky?

Thanks for the clarification.

Here's a link describing the GGX model. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~srm/publications/EGSR07-btdf.pdf [cs.cornell.edu]

Sony-Imageworks tends to use this model allot along with Beckmann and Ashikhmin.

Wolfwood,

what's the culprit from keeping people to write BSDF's using vex and the hdk? (Gory technical details, please!)

Cheers,
Hans

Well… even though you can't currently define your own bsdf object, you can still define a bunch of (VEX) functions that mimic the features of a built-in bsdf. That is: implement your own versions of sample_bsdf(), eval_bsdf(), albedo(bsdf,<dir>), etc., and then use them in a Multiple Importance Sampling setting, similar to what's happening in pbrpathtrace.h (which you would also need to write yourself, but you can use that header as a guide).

I'm coincidentally in the middle of trying just that (for a Cook-Torrance based model) and it seems to be working pretty well so far (very efficient sampling), though I still have to tame some of the weights in the MIS portion :?

Mario Marengo
I'm coincidentally in the middle of trying just that (for a Cook-Torrance based model) and it seems to be working pretty well so far (very efficient sampling), though I still have to tame some of the weights in the MIS portion :?

From what I gather (pun!) on reading the GGX paper, the BRDF component of the GGX BSDF is the same as the Cook-Torrance except they divide by 4 instead of a factor of PI.

The BTDF is a bit different tho. @Rtalz, do you guys use the full BSDF or just the BRDF component?

Wolfwood
From what I gather (pun!) on reading the GGX paper, the BRDF component of the GGX BSDF is the same as the Cook-Torrance except they divide by 4 instead of a factor of PI.

I don't think so. The difference is in the distribution (the “D” term), and all 3 versions are pretty different (as are their shapes). All the D's have a 1/PI term that comes from normalizing to projected solid angle (an extra cos(theta) term in the integral => Solve, which the original Cook-Torrance “D” didn't have, so the 1/PI term was missing there). And the 1/4 or 1/4(w.h) factor (for the whole BRDF, not the D term) comes from mapping an “h-distribution” (a distribution of halfway vectors about n) to an “o-distribution” (a distribution about the outgoing direction).

…at least that's how I understand it at the moment

Mario Marengo
I don't think so….

And that's what I get for just skimming it. ops: Apologies for the misinformation.

Mario Marengo
I'm coincidentally in the middle of trying just that (for a Cook-Torrance based model) and it seems to be working pretty well so far (very efficient sampling), though I still have to tame some of the weights in the MIS portion :?

ooo, i hope this makes an appearance on the exchange

jason

*cough*

Probably not.

JC

*cough* damit*cough* *cough*

Does anybody know if the henyey-greenstein Volume BSDFs is able to do forward scattering and adding backward scattering? Because thats what the “double henyey-greenstein” does.
“The double Henyey-Greenstein phase function is the sum of two Henyey-Greenstein phase functions, one being forward scattering, and the other being backward scattering.” http://physics.nist.gov/Divisions/Div844/facilities/scatmech/html/phase.htm [physics.nist.gov]

rtalz
Here's a link describing the GGX model. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~srm/publications/EGSR07-btdf.pdf [cs.cornell.edu]

Sony-Imageworks tends to use this model allot along with Beckmann and Ashikhmin.

Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mopk3gqisVI [youtube.com]

Just made an implementation of this paper. GGX specular is so cool!

I hope that in H12 we can implement custom BSDF's.

sergey_sh
Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mopk3gqisVI [youtube.com]

Just made an implementation of this paper. GGX specular is so cool!

GGX, how I love you. Great work.