Microfacet-based Normal Mapping

Texture maps are used for defining material properties for every point per object surface. Normal maps are textures that are efficient for introducing spatial variational detail on smooth geometry. Information from the normal map, in current shading point, can be used to define either shading normal of meso-surface or microsurface profile of microfacet bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF). In this project, we will implement a method from Schüssler et al. "Microfacet-based normal mapping for robust Monte Carlo path tracing" which tackles with microfacet based normal mapping. The result of this method enables us to use arbitrary normal maps and BRDFs for defining the microfacet BRDF for the whole surface. Important properties of the introduced microfacet BRDF are energy conservation, symmetry and discrete distribution of microsurface normals which preserves high-frequency detail.