Affiliation: INRIA (researcher)
Project-team: manao
Email: pascal dot barla at inria dot fr
Address: 351, cours de la Libération,
33405 Talence, France
Location: Building A30, Office 252
Phone: +33 (0) 5 40 00 37 95

Toward a perceptually plausible model of appearance

Computer graphics applications usually treat appearance in different ways, depending on whether they start from scratch, from 3D scenes or from videos. I argue that a common model of appearance would better serve such applications: it would greatly help the creation of complex appearance patterns in drawing applications; it would permit to connect physical descriptions to appearance percepts in rendering; and it would give a rich basis for image analysis at the compositing stage.  Such a model should describe appearance in a perceptually plausible manner, directly identifying invariants across different lighting or motion. This requires to draw connections with Human Vision; but there is also potentially room for graphics to inspire new perceptual investigations. Most of the research projects I have been recently involved in work toward these goals.

Such an integrated approach opens interesting avenues for a range of applications. For the advertisement and film industries, the appearance of rendered 3D scenes could be manipulated based on specific artistic intent, and merged with video footage. In scientific illustration, measured object features (such as shape, or reflectance) could be visualized through stylized appearance as in classical illustrated text books. Video games would also likely benefit from a plausible model of appearance, for speeding up rendering or providing novel styles. Last but not least, traditional 2D animations could be augmented with more complex appearance patterns, with appropriate tools for artists to control their evolution through time. This is demonstrated through prototype software of various sorts (plugins, standalone applications, shaders, etc).

Academic and industrial collaborations

  • U. of Bordeaux (ANR SeARCH): shape analysis and visualization for Archeology.
  • U. of Zaragoza (CTP funding): editing and stylization of material appearance.
  • Autodesk (ADN program): stylized rendering for 3D sculpting.
  • Luxology (Beta program): shape enhancement and appearance editing.