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On the Accuracy of Surface Scattering Theories

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Matthew Avolio, Eugene D'Eon, Shlomi Steinberg

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On the Accuracy of Surface Scattering Theories is a Eurographics short paper by Matthew Avolio, Eugene D'Eon, and Shlomi Steinberg comparing microfacet and Generalized Harvey-Shack predictions against photographed metal surfaces measured with AFM and profilometry. The author PDF is hosted on ssteinberg.xyz.

Experiments show no single scattering model matches photographs at all angles and roughness levels tested. The paper links GGX behavior to K-correlation power spectral densities and argues that familiar GGX highlights can arise from wave optics on Gaussian random surfaces, not only from heuristic microfacet choices.

Shading researchers and material validation engineers working on metallic BSDFs at an advanced level are the readers. Comfort with BRDF measurement and microfacet math is expected.

The PDF is freely linked from the author's site as an open preprint-style copy. The authors' combined track record in microfacet and wave optics literature makes the paper notable in physically based shading research.

Link last verified accessible on 2026-09-28.