What's wrong with Phong - Designers' appraisal of shading in CAD-systems

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the limitations of the Phong illumination model in CAD systems, highlighting issues faced by digital designers and aiming to raise awareness of its flaws and interdependencies.

Contribution

It provides a visual evaluation of Phong shading from designers' perspectives, which is lacking in existing literature, and discusses its limitations and interdependencies.

Findings

Identifies specific problems with Phong shading in professional use

Highlights the impact of these issues on digital designers

Calls for increased awareness of model limitations

Abstract

The Phong illumination model is still widely used in realtime 3D visualization systems. The aim of this article is to document problems with the Phong illumination model that are encountered by an important professional user group, namely digital designers. This leads to a visual evaluation of Phong illumination, which at least in this condensed form seems still to be missing in the literature. It is hoped that by explicating these flaws, awareness about the limitations and interdependencies of the model will increase, both among fellow users, and among researchers and developers.