Conference Background
The Material Appearance Conference began in 2014 as the Measuring, Modeling and Reproducing Material Appearance Conference (MMRMA), within Electronic Imaging Symposium 2014, founded by Jan Allebach (Purdue University) jointly with Philipp Urban (Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung) and Maria Ortiz Segovia (Océ Print Logic Technologies). After co-founding the conference in 2014 Jan Allebach stepped down and Francisco Imai (Canon U.S.A. Inc.) joined as a co-chair. Continuing the process of rotating chairs and bringing new focuses to the meeting, Maria Ortiz Segovia and Phililpp Urban decided to step down after founding the meeting and working for three years. Ingeborg Tastl (HP Inc. Laboratories) and Mathieu Hébert (Université Jean Monnet/CNRS) join Francisco Imai as co-chairs in 2017. The name of the conference is also simplified as Material Appearance Conference (MAAP) in 2017 giving continuity to MMRMA Conference. We enjoy our annual reunions, as shown in this photo of our MMRMA (now MAAP) Committee Luncheon in 2016.
The rapid and continuous development of rendering devices such as displays and printers offers interesting challenges related to how materials are understood. Over the years, researchers from different disciplines have studied the interaction of incident light with the texture and surface geometry of a given object, as well as the optical properties of distinct materials. Thanks to those efforts, we have been able to render with high accuracy 2.5D and 3D objects and scenes. But given the day-to-day technological improvements of materials and devices along with the advances in the areas of visual and tactile perception, modeling how light interacts with materials, and techniques for measuring material properties, the field of material appearance is in constant evolution. This conference offers the possibility to share research results and establish new collaborations among academic and industrial researchers from these related fields. Since its foundation this conference has been a meeting place for communities involved in material appearance metrology, perception, modeling, rendering and reproduction and in the reproduction domain it has gradually shifted from more traditional color inkjet printing to material appearance aspects for emerging 2.5D and 3D printing processes. This meeting has received generous support from Canon U.S.A. Inc. and Océ.
The conference provides strong support to student presenters. For example, the 2015 winner of the MMRMA best student paper was Dennis den Brok (University of Bonn) for his work on "Extrapolation of bidirectional texture functions using texture synthesis guided by photometric normal" sponsored by Canon U.S.A. Inc., shown here.
Past Keynote Speakers
Each year we offer keynote speakers to enrich the conference program. When feasible, we will provide the presentation materials here after the conference.
2020 -
Capturing and 3D rendering of optical behavior: The physical approach to realism, Martin Ritz, Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (Germany)
2019 -
Beyond printing: How to expand 3D applications through postprocessing, Isabel Sanz, HP Inc. (Spain)
2019 -
Capturing appearance in text: The Material Definition Language (MDL), Andy Kopra, NVIDIA Advanced Rendering Center (Germany)
2019 -
Enough (data) already!, Marc Ellens, X-Rite, Inc. (United States)
2019 -
On the acquisition and reproduction of material appearance, Jon Yngve Hardeberg, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) (Norway)
2018 -
Digital appearance assessment methods and challenges, Marc Ellens, X-Rite, Inc. (United States)
2018 - Material appearance issues: Cultural heritage research, Holly Rushmeier, Yale University (United States)
2017 -
The future of material communication via the Appearance Exchange Format (AxF), Marc Ellens, Gero Mueller, and Francis Lamy, X-Rite, Inc. (United States)
2016 - Computational imaging for inverse scattering, Ioannis Gkioulekas, Harvard University (USA), Kavita Bala, Cornell University (United States), Frédo Durand, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States), Anat Levin, The Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), Shuang Zhao, University of California, Irvine (United States), and Todd Zickler, Harvard University (United States)
2015 - Generative appearance models in the perception of materials and their properties, Roland W. Fleming, Justus-Liebig-Univ. Giessen (Germany
2014 - Perceiving, measuring, and modeling 3D material appearance, Christopher W. Tyler, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute (United States)
Conference Proceedings
Material Appearance 2020
Material Appearance 2019
Material Appearance 2018
Material Appearance 2017
Measuring, Modeling, and Reproducing Material Appearance 2016