OptiX mdl wrapper mbsdf not supported yet?

Hi all,

we are using MDL material files within our OptiX based ray tracer by using the compile_df() function of the mdl_wrapper provided with the OptiX 6.0.0 SDK.

Everything seems to work fine regarding the compilation and usage of the Bsdf_evaluate_function within our closest_hit program.
Solely the usage of measured materials under using a measured bsdf file (.mbsdf) does not seem to work at all (the material remains black / completely absorbing).

We tested the very same .mdl file with the Iray Material Editor to proof the correctness of the material. So we can say it doesn’t seem to be a faulty .mdl file (unless Iray Material Editor detects and fixes wrong material definitions on its own).

Is it possible, that the mdl_wrapper->compile_df() function doesn’t support measured materials with .mbsdf files yet? Or do we have to handle measured materials in a different way compared to other materials?

Thank you in advance and best regards.

Yes, that’s most likely not supported. Sampling and evaluation of those is not trivial.

Do you really plan to use measured BSDF materials?
I have never seen a good measurement. Near to the grazing angles they were all too incorrect.

The MDL wrapper inside the OptiX SDK is just there because the MDL SDK was not open-sourced at that time.

Please have a look into the MDL SDK specific developer forum for more up to date information.
MDL related questions should go there. [url]MDL SDK - NVIDIA Developer Forums

Hi Detlef,

Thanks a lot for your fast and helpful reply.

Since we are using OptiX and MDL for our LiDAR-Simulation and MDL files are not available for specific LiDAR-Sensors it would be nice to use measured BSDFs within MDL as well.

Is there already some announcement regarding adding MBSDF support to the compile_df() function?
Or is it currently handled as “won’t fix” and users should implement those functionality on their own?

Or may you or I move this question to the mdl-sdk forum before?

Thanks a lot for your support.

I don’t track the MDL SDK implementation. I’ll move this thread to the MDL SDK forum after this post.

Hi thi,

currently we are not working on enhancing the “Mdl_helper” class of the OptiX examples.
But the CUDA example “df_cuda” in the MDL SDK contains an implementation of the required functionality:

  • the preprocessing of the data in "Material_gpu_context::prepare_mbsdf()" in examples/mdl_sdk/shared/texture_support_cuda.h
  • the measured bsdf runtime functions "df_bsdf_measurement_*" in examples/mdl_sdk/shared/texture_support_cuda.h

The callable program names expected by the generated code are (analogously to the ones in “Mdl_helper::set_texture_functions()”):

  • df_bsdf_measurement_resolution
  • df_bsdf_measurement_evaluate
  • df_bsdf_measurement_sample
  • df_bsdf_measurement_pdf
  • df_bsdf_measurement_albedos

You could port this functionality to the “Mdl_helper” class, calling the ported preprocessing functions in “Mdl_helper::create_program()” and adding the ported runtime functions to mdl_textures.cu.

Hope that helps
Moritz