A comprehensive physical model for light reflection in textiles for computer graphics applications

This paper is concerned with the optical properties and 3D modelling of textile structures (yarn, woven and knitted product). A method for establishing a set of statistical surface parameters for a fibre from atomic force microscopy measurement is proposed. This technique is adapted for yarn. Nevertheless, AFM measurements are impossible for this structure, so a virtual profiler has been developed. Finally, several reflectance models are compared. The Lafortune model is the most adapted to predict reflectance properties of yarn. The correlation of estimated and measured surface parameters is processed to make the model physically plausible for textile materials. Once this task has been achieved, this modified model is implanted in a ray tracing program for more realistic computer graphic application in the field of textiles.