3D polar plot

It is possible to make the polar plot more visually appealing by converting to rectangular coordinates and representing it as a 3D surface. A modification of this method involves slicing the 3D shape along the solar principal plane so as to reveal more clearly the variations in directional reflectance along this important axis. In a further development of this idea, animation has been used to produce movies of polar plots, showing how the directional reflectance changes with solar angle, or with wavelength. Within the field of computer graphics there are also many other ways in which theoretical BRDFs are presented, often involving rendered 3D models and techniques drawn from virtual reality research.

3D polar plot of the directional reflectance of rangeland vegetation (above) and a cross-sectional view through a 3D polar plot of prairie grassland (below), showing the power of this visualisation to capture both the overall shape of the BRDF and the detail of directional reflectance in the solar principal plane. (from Deering, 1989, In Theory and Applications of Optical Remote Sensing, Asrar, G. ed.)