Predicting Visual Perception of Material Structure in Virtual Environments

0466234 - ÚTIA 2018 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Filip, Jiří - Vávra, Radomír - Havlíček, Michal - Krupička, Mikuláš
Predicting Visual Perception of Material Structure in Virtual Environments.
Computer Graphics Forum. Roč. 36, č. 1 (2017), s. 89-100. ISSN 0167-7055. E-ISSN 1467-8659
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA14-02652S
Institutional support: RVO:67985556
Keywords : appearance modelling * BRDF * BTF * user study * reflectance and shading
OECD category: Computer hardware and architecture
Impact factor: 2.046, year: 2017
http://library.utia.cas.cz/separaty/2016/RO/filip-0466234.pdf

One of the most accurate yet still practical representation of material appearance is the Bidirectional Texture Function (BTF). The BTF can be viewed as an extension of Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) for additional spatial information that includes local visual effects such as shadowing, inter-reflection, subsurface-scattering, etc. However, the shift from BRDF to BTF represents not only a huge leap in respect to the realism of material reproduction, but also related high memory and computational costs stemming from the storage and processing of massive BTF data.
In this work we argue that each opaque material, regardless of its surface structure, can be safely substituted by a BRDF without the introduction of a significant perceptual error when viewed from an appropriate distance. Therefore, we ran a set of psychophysical studies over 25 materials to determine so called critical viewing distances, i.e., the minimal distances at which the material spatial structure (texture) cannot be visually discerned. Our analysis determined such typical distances typical for several material categories often used in interior design applications. Furthermore, we propose a combination of computational features that can predict such distances without the need for a psychophysical study. We show that our work can significantly reduce rendering costs in applications that process complex virtual scenes.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0265787


Research data: data1