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Lambertian Reflectance

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Computer Vision

Synonyms

Lambertian model; Lambert’s law

Related Concepts

Definition

Lambertian reflectance is a scene property that distributes the energy from any incident illumination into all viewing directions equally.

Background

Local reflectance can be defined by the four-dimensional bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF), where the four dimensions are the angles for viewing direction and incident illumination. Lambertian reflectance has no dependency on viewing direction and is therefore a two-dimensional function. This simplicity has made it popular, but like all local models, it does not account for cast shadows or specularities. The Lambertian model is widely used due to both its computational tractability and its fidelity to many scenes, especially when the captured image data is of low resolution. Finally, the Lambertian model is an example of diffuse reflectance, which means it acts as a low-pass filter to incident illumination [1]....

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Sanjeev J. Koppal

Authors
  1. Sanjeev J. Koppal
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sanjeev J. Koppal .

Section Editor information

  1. No affiliation provided

    Todd Zickler

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Koppal, S.J. (2021). Lambertian Reflectance. In: Computer Vision. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03243-2_534-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03243-2_534-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03243-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03243-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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