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Abstract

Different materials such as silk, bronze and marmalade have distinctive visual appearances. Human observers are remarkably adept at recognizing materials across a wide range of viewing conditions and we are only just beginning to work out how. What gives a material its characteristic 'look'? What cues does the visual system use to identify materials? How can we leverage the assumptions made by the visual system to improve computer graphics? I will review some of our research on the perception of material properties such as gloss, translucency and refractive index that attempts to shed some light on these questions. Ill talk about how illumination and 3D geometry interact with material perception, and discuss the role of various image statistics (e.g. intensity histogram, amplitude spectrum) in the visual estimation of material attributes. Ill then show one application in which we exploit the heuristics made by the visual system to enable illusory modifications of material appearance in photographs.