Question on Specular reflection behaviour?_问答_开发者

Why Specular reflected light will be in bright color(usually white) 开发者_运维百科while other parts of the object are reflecting the perceived color wavelength?

From a physical perspective, this is because:

specular reflection results from light bouncing off the surface of material
diffuse reflection results from light bouncing around inside the material

Say you have a piece of red plastic with a smooth surface. The plastic is red because it contains a red dye or pigment. Incoming light that enters the plastic tends to be reflected if red, or absorbed if it is not; this red light bounces around inside the plastic and makes it back out in a more or less random direction (which is why this component is called "diffuse").

On the other hand, some of the incoming light never makes it into the plastic to begin with: it bounces off the surface, instead. Because the surface of the plastic is smooth, its direction is not randomized: it reflects off in a direction based on the mirror reflection angle (which is why it is called "specular"). Since it never hits any of the colorant in the plastic, its color is not changed by selective absorption like the diffuse component; this is why specular reflection is usually white.

I should add that the above is a highly simplified version of reality: there are plenty of cases that are not covered by these two possibilities. However, they are common enough and generally applicable enough for computer graphics work: the diffuse+specular model can give a good visible approximation to many surfaces, especially when combined with other cheap approximation like bump mapping, etc.

Edit: a reference in response to Ayappa's comment -- the mechanism that generally gives rise to specular highlights is called Fresnel reflection. It is a classical phenomenon, depending solely on the refractive index of the material.

If the surface of the material is optically smooth (e.g., a high-quality glass window), the Fresnel reflection will produce a true mirror-like image. If the material is only partly smooth (like semigloss paint) you will get a specular highlight, which may be narrow or wide based on how smooth it is at the microscopic level. If the material is completely rough (either at a microscopic level or at some larger scale which is smaller than your image resolution), then the Fresnel reflection becomes effectively diffuse, and cannot be readily distinguished from other forms of diffuse reflection.

Its a question of wavelength absorption vs reflection.

First, specular reflections do not exist in the real world. Everything you see is mostly reflected light (the rest being emissive or other), including diffuse lighting. Realistically, there is no real difference between diffuse and specular lighting : its all a reflection. Also keep in mind that real world lighting is not clamped to the 0-1 range as pixels are.

Diffusion of light reflected off of a surface is caused by the microscopic roughness of the surface (microfacets). Imagine a surface is made up of millions of microscopic mirrors. If they are all aligned, you get a perfect polished mirror. If they are all randomly oriented, light is scattered in every direction and the resulting reflection is "blurred". Many formulas in computer graphics try to model this microscopic surface roughness, like Oren–Nayar, but usually the simple Lambert model is used because it is computationally cheap.

Colors are a result of wavelength absorption vs reflection. When light energy hits a material, some of that energy is absorbed by that material. Not all wavelengths of the energy are absorbed at the same rate however. If white light bounces off of a surface which absorbs red wavelengths, you will see a green-blue color. The more a surface absorbs light, the darker the color will appear as less and less light energy is returned. Most of the absorbed light energy is converted to thermal energy, and is why black materials will heat up in the sun faster than white materials.

Specular in computer graphics is meant to simulate a strong direct light source reflecting off of a surface like it may do in the real world. Realistically though, you would have to reflect the entire scene in high range lighting and color depth, and specular would be the result of light sources being much brighter than the rest of the reflected scene and returning a much higher amount of light energy after one or more reflections than the rest of the light from the scene. That would be quite computationally painful though! Not feasible for realtime graphics just yet. Lighting with HDR environment maps were an attempt to properly simulate this.

Additional references and explanations :

Specular Reflections :

Specular reflections only differ from diffuse reflections by the roughness of a reflective surface. There is no inherent difference between them, both terms refer to reflected light. Also note that diffusion in this context simply means the scattering of light, and diffuse reflection should not be confused with other forms of light diffusion such as subsurface diffusion (commonly called subsurface scattering or SSS). Specular and diffuse reflections could be replaced with terms like "sharp" reflections and "blurry" reflections of light.

Electromagnetic Energy Absorption by Atoms :

Atoms seek a balanced energy state, so if you add energy to an atom, it will seek to discharge it. When energy like light is passed to an atom, some of the energy is absorbed which excites the atom, causing a gain in thermal energy (heat), the rest is reflected or transmitted (passes "through"). Atoms will absorb energy at different wavelengths at different rates, and the reflected light with modified intensity per wavelength is what gives color. How much energy an atom can absorb depends on it's current energy state and atomic structure.

So, in a very very simple model, ignoring angle of incidence and other factors, say i shine RGB(1,1,1) on a surface which absorbs RGB(0.5,0,0.75), assuming no transmittance is occurring, your reflected light value is RGB(0.5,1.0,0.25).

Now say you shine a light at RGB(2,2,2) on the same surface. The surface's properties have not changed. Reflected light is RGB( 1.5 , 2.0 , 1.25 ). If the sensor receiving this reflected light clamps at 1.0, then perceived light is RGB(1,1,1), or white, even though the material is colored.

Some references :

page at www.physicsclassroom.com

page on ask a scientist

Wikipedia : Atoms

Wikipedia : Energy Levels