On-site Reflectometry in the Real World

The proposed research is in the area of appearance modelling for realistic computer graphics and computer vision. The best way to model the rich variation in the appearance of real world materials is through measurements and this process of measuring the reflectance property of a material is referred to as reflectometry. Traditionally, reflectometry has involved carefully calibrated reflectance measurements under controlled illumination. This has limited the scope of these measurements to inside the laboratory and has hindered on-site measurements in general indoor or outdoor conditions. Here, we propose a novel approach to reflectometry with portable on-site acquisition based on off-the-shelf components. Specifically, we propose employing a mobile device such as a smartphone or a tablet for measuring the reflectance properties of flat material samples in general indoor environments. We propose to further extend reflectometry to general outdoor environments, where instead of relying on controlled incident illumination, we propose to estimate reflectance properties from measurements of polarization characteristics of reflected light as formalized by Stokes parameters in conjunction with multispectral imaging. Thus, this research aims to extend reflectometry for computer graphics and vision to general real world environments which has many potential applications in entertainment, cultural heritage and virtual reality.

Extension of surface reflectometry from controlled laboratory measurements to general indoor and
outdoor environments has many applications in computer graphics and vision. A major application area
is digitization of shape and reflectance of material samples for realistic modeling of digital props in the
entertainment industry for visual effects and video games. Reflectometry in outdoor environments has the
potential to impact the realism and quality of virtual reality and large scale visualization systems as well
as consumer applications such as Google StreetView/Earth and Microsoft's Phototourism. The mobile
platform for reflectometry has the potential to also benefit applications outside the entertainment industry
in areas such as digitization of cultural heritage artifacts in museums and art galleries for posterity
as well as interactive virtual visualization for the general public via new media technologies. There are
also possible applications in life sciences and medicine in digitzation of the surface appearance of biological
samples for digital preservation as well as analysis. Because our proposed research will lead to
techniques that can be used to create realistic virtual models relevant to various application areas, these
domains and the general public are all potential beneficiaries of the work.