The Cornell Box

The Cornell Box

The Cornell Box Wikipedia

The Cornell Box is a test aimed at determining the accuracy of rendering software by comparing the rendered scene with an actual photograph of the same scene. It was created by the Cornell University Program of Computer Graphics for a paper published in 1984.

A physical model of the box is created and photographed with a CCD camera. The exact settings are then measured from the scene: emission spectrum of the light source, reflectance spectra of all the surfaces, exact position and size of all objects, walls, light source and camera.

The same scene is then reproduced in the renderer, and the output file is compared with the photography.