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Visual Realism in Digital Heritage

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Heritage Preservation

Abstract

To be convincing, digital heritage needs to represent physical objects and render them in a way that looks realistic when viewed on a display screen. The problem is difficult enough for flat 2D objects viewed under arbitrary sources of illumination, but is much harder for 3D objects with curved surfaces of diverse materials, especially with varying degrees of sheen or gloss. A new method is presented for estimating the reflectance distribution function from a set of images taken in an illumination dome. Surface normals and albedo are calculated by regression over a subset of the intensity at each pixel. The ratio of actual intensity to diffuse intensity enables the direction of peak specularity to be determined. Then the distribution of specular intensity is modelled as a modified Lorentzian function of radial angle from the specular peak direction, with circular cross section for isotropic surfaces and elliptical cross section for anisotropic surfaces. Fitting the results over the image enables a characteristic RDF (a two-dimensional subset of the BRDF for fixed viewing direction) to be estimated. Rendering the surface by a model that adds the body colour (diffuse) and specular (glistening) components at each pixel for any direction of incident illumination is shown to provide a good simulation of the appearance of the original object.

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Acknowledgements

This research was carried out under the auspices of the European COST Action TD1201 Colour and Space in Cultural Heritage (COSCH). The purpose of the study of Roman coins was to apply a number of techniques to record silver coins, to compare and evaluate the results, and to test methods for 3D visualisation and presentation of multimodal results. Thanks to Dr. Anna Bentkowska for oversight of the research programme and to Prof. Stuart Robson and Dr. Mona Hess for support within UCL. Thanks also to Tom Malzbender for notes about the development of his illumination dome.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 3DImpact Research Group, Faculty of Engineering, University College London, London, UK

    Lindsay W. MacDonald

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  1. Lindsay W. MacDonald
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Correspondence to Lindsay W. MacDonald .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Electronics and Communication Sciences Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Bhabatosh Chanda

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Subhasis Chaudhuri

  3. CSIR-CEERI, Pilani, Rajasthan, India

    Santanu Chaudhury

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MacDonald, L.W. (2018). Visual Realism in Digital Heritage. In: Chanda, B., Chaudhuri, S., Chaudhury, S. (eds) Heritage Preservation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7221-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7221-5_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-7220-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-7221-5

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