Open andre-ilm opened 8 months ago
Hi Andre,
I'm not sure I see the issue with terming the parameter "opacity". As we state in the spec:
So we do explicitly point out that the opacity/alpha is functioning as a presence weight, according to what the statistical mix operator is supposed to mean.
It's true that the transparency generated is not due to varying volumetric absorption in a finite width slab of material, rather it is due to microscopic holes in the thin surface. I think both situations are correctly interpreted as opacity/transparency though. (You could perhaps think of it as corresponding to the thin-wall limit of an absorbing slab, with a constant optical depth tau such that transmittance = exp(-tau) = 1 - opacity).
Also, in the thin-walled case, we do say that the geometry_opacity
functions explicitly as a fractional value, i.e. specifying 1 minus transmittance (so not just a {1, 0} valued signal for cutouts):
I was wondering if anyone would be open to using an alternative name for
geometric_opacity
.In OpenPBR the intention of this signal is to create cutouts of the geometry, rather than to change how much light is transmitted through the surface. In my experience opacity is usually used to describe the degree of transmittance.
Interestingly, the definition of the parameter mentions presence:
In my opinion choosing
presence
would improve the readability of the parameter.coverage
is another alternative ifpresence
isn't appropriate for some reason.