research-article

The assumed light direction for perceiving shape from shading

Authors:

James P. O'Shea,

Martin S. Banks,

Maneesh AgrawalaAuthors Info & Claims

APGV '08: Proceedings of the 5th symposium on Applied perception in graphics and visualization

Pages 135 - 142

https://doi.org/10.1145/1394281.1394306

Published: 09 August 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Recovering 3D shape from shading is an ill-posed problem that the visual system can solve only by making use of additional information such as the position of the light source. Previous research has shown that people tend to assume light is above and slightly to the left of the object [Sun and Perona 1998]. We present a study to investigate whether the visual system also assumes the angle between the light direction and the viewing direction. We conducted a shape perception experiment in which subjects estimated surface orientation on smooth, virtual 3D shapes displayed monocularly using local Lambertian shading without cast shadows. We varied the angle between the viewing direction and the light direction within a range +/- 66 deg (above/below), and subjects indicated local surface orientation by rotating a gauge figure to appear normal to the surface [Koenderink et al. 1992]. Observer settings were more accurate and precise when the light was positioned above rather than below the viewpoint. Additionally, errors were minimized when the angle between the light direction and the viewing direction was 20--30 deg. Measurements of surface slant and tilt error support this result. These findings confirm the light-from-above prior and provide evidence that the angle between the viewing direction and the light direction is assumed to be 20--30 deg above the viewpoint.

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Wolski KTrutoiu LDong ZShen ZMackenzie KChapiro A(2022)Geo-MetricACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3550454.355547541:6(1-13)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3550454.3555475
Misiak MWissmann NFuhrmann ALatoschik M(2019)The Impact of Stereo Rendering on the Perception of Normal Mapped Geometry in Virtual RealityProceedings of the 25th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology10.1145/3359996.3364811(1-2)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2019
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Che LKang F(2018)Exploring the efficiency of image metric for assessing the visual quality of 3D mesh modelInternational Journal of Modeling, Simulation, and Scientific Computing10.1142/S1793962318500563(1850056)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2018
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Index Terms

The assumed light direction for perceiving shape from shading
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Computer vision
  2. Computer graphics
    1. Animation
    2. Shape modeling
2. Theory of computation
  1. Randomness, geometry and discrete structures
    1. Computational geometry

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cover image ACM Conferences

APGV '08: Proceedings of the 5th symposium on Applied perception in graphics and visualization

August 2008

209 pages

ISBN:9781595939814

DOI:10.1145/1394281

Program Chairs:
Sarah Creem-Regehr
University of Utah
,
Karol Myszkowski
MPI Informatik

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 09 August 2008

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APGV08: ACM Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization

August 9 - 10, 2008

California, Los Angeles

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Overall Acceptance Rate 19 of 33 submissions, 58%

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Cited By

Wolski KTrutoiu LDong ZShen ZMackenzie KChapiro A(2022)Geo-MetricACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3550454.355547541:6(1-13)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3550454.3555475
Misiak MWissmann NFuhrmann ALatoschik M(2019)The Impact of Stereo Rendering on the Perception of Normal Mapped Geometry in Virtual RealityProceedings of the 25th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology10.1145/3359996.3364811(1-2)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3359996.3364811
Che LKang F(2018)Exploring the efficiency of image metric for assessing the visual quality of 3D mesh modelInternational Journal of Modeling, Simulation, and Scientific Computing10.1142/S1793962318500563(1850056)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2018
https://doi.org/10.1142/S1793962318500563
Lavoué GCordier FSeo HLarabi M(2018)Visual Attention for Rendered 3D ShapesComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1335337:2(191-203)Online publication date: 22-May-2018
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.13353
Faul F(2017)Toward a Perceptually Uniform Parameter Space for Filter TransparencyACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/302273214:2(1-21)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2017
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Janeh OLangbehn ESteinicke FBruder GGulberti APoetter-Nerger M(2017)Walking in Virtual RealityACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/302273114:2(1-15)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3022731
Ohtaka YTakahashi SWu HOhta N(2017)Using Mutual Information for Exploring Optimal Light Source PlacementsSmart Graphics10.1007/978-3-319-53838-9_13(155-166)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53838-9_13
Preim BBaer ACunningham DIsenberg TRopinski T(2016)A Survey of Perceptually Motivated 3D Visualization of Medical Image DataComputer Graphics Forum10.5555/3071534.307158735:3(501-525)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2016
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Guo JVidal VCheng IBasu ABaskurt ALavoue G(2016)Subjective and Objective Visual Quality Assessment of Textured 3D MeshesACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/299629614:2(1-20)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2016
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Bernardo MPinheiro AFiadeiro PPereira M(2016)Image Quality under Chromatic ImpairmentsACM Transactions on Applied Perception10.1145/296490814:1(1-20)Online publication date: 24-Aug-2016
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