Introduction: Computer graphics researchers have developed increasingly sophisticated and accurate physically-based subsurface scattering BSSRDF models: from the simple dipole diffusion model [Jensen et al. 2001] to the quantized diffusion [d'Eon and Irving 2011] and beam diffusion [Habel et al. 2013] models. We present a BSSRDF model based on an empirical reflectance profile that is as simple as the dipole but matches brute-force Monte Carlo references better than even beam diffusion. Advantages of our empirical model: 1) faster and simpler evaluation. 2) no need to numerically invert the intuitive surface albedo A and mean free path length l input parameters to volume scattering and absorption coefficients; 3) built-in single-scattering term;

One-line summary: A simple BSSRDF model for efficient subsurface scattering.

Published in: SIGGRAPH 2015 Talks. ACM, August 2015. (Los Angeles, USA, August 9-13.)

Note: There is a typo in the official SIGGRAPH version of this document: missing abs value in equation 2.

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More information in: Pixar Technical Memo #15-04.

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