ABSTRACT
To this end, Landis [Landis 02] introduced so-called bent normals. While AO stores the average occlusion, bent normals are modified normals bent according to an estimate of the direction that is most disoccluded, in other words, the average unblocked direction. Using these bent normals in shading-for example, with preconvolved environment maps-leads to improved lighting. Usually, bent
normals can be easily integrated in rendering engines; the only required change is to apply a bending of the normal. Adjusting the length of the bent normal by multiplying it with the corresponding AO value leads to automatically integrating AO in the shading evaluation.
