Rendering Structural Color

Faculty Advisor: Emmanuel Agu

Team Members: Ben Sandofsky

Jonathan Guillory

Iridescence is a phenomenon whereby certain surfaces give off different colors at different tilt angles. Iridescent colors are produced by certain animals and are called structural colors. Examples of such animals include peacocks, hummingbirds, butterflies, some snakes and beetles. This project will investigate surface structures and study mechanisms such as diffraction, interference and dispersive refraction which cause iridescence in these animals with the goal of producing computer graphics algorithms and techniques for rendering stunning images of these animals. Rendering will be done using high-end commercial packages like Maya and Photoshop and relevant computer graphics issues like polygonal mesh generation and bi-directional reflectance (BRDF) modeling will be addressed.

http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/i/sects/15/butterfly.jpg

http://www.museum.state.il.us/muslink/prairie/images/dogbeetle_400.jpg