Measuring, Modeling, and Rendering Surface Appearance
Instructors: James Ferwerda and Snehal Padhye, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: Intermediate
Duration: 2 hours, with a 15 minute break
Date: On Demand

Prerequisites: A basic level understanding of issues in color/imaging science. All specialized concepts will be introduced in the course.

Benefits:
This course enables an attendee to:

• Identify the physical and perceptual dimensions of surface appearance.
• Understand the technologies used to measure, model, and render surface appearance.
• Appreciate the practicalities of implementing these technologies, and their advantages and limitations.
• Choose the technologies that are most appropriate for their application domain.

Course Description: Real-world surfaces often have complex topographic and material properties. Creating accurate and realistic digital models of these surfaces is a topic of great interest to many fields. In this course, we describe the physical processes and visual mechanisms that determine surface appearance, and then survey efforts to develop image-based systems for measuring, modeling, and rendering the appearances of complex surfaces. We describe the capabilities and limitations of different systems, and provide a tutorial on the implementation, calibration, use, and assessment of a system for creating digital models of paintings, manuscripts, and other complex textured surfaces.

Topics:

• Dimensions of surface appearance: color, gloss, translucency, texture
• Measuring appearance
• Perceiving appearance
• Image-based appearance capture systems
• Multi-view systems
• Multi-light systems
• Structured light systems
• Deep learning-based systems
• Practicalities
• Implementation (lights, cameras, hardware, software)
• Geometric and radiometric calibration
• Assessing accuracy and precision
• Modeling and analyzing appearance properties
• Appearance rendering, display, and interaction

Intended Audience: Students and professionals who want to understand the physics and psychophysics of surface appearance, and want to evaluate and/or develop systems to measure, model, and render these properties.

James A. Ferwerda is an associate professor. He received a BA in psychology, MS in computer graphics, and a PhD in experimental psychology, all from Cornell University. The focus of his research is on building computational models of human vision from psychophysical experiments, and developing advanced imaging systems based on these models.

Snehal A. Padhye is a third year PhD student. She completed a BS in electronics, and an MS in signal processing from India. Her dissertation research work focuses on designing hardware and software systems for capturing and visualizing realistic digital models of cultural heritage objects.

Cost:
Member $ 85
Non Member $ 95
Student $ 45

For office use only: