Computer Graphics and Visualization Lab
Department of Computer Science at Purdue University

Appearance Editing: Modifying the Appearance of Real-World Objects

Summary
Appearance editing offers a unique way to view visually altered objects with various appearances or visualizations. By carefully controlling how an object is illuminated using digital projectors, we obtain stereoscopic imagery for any number of observers with everything visible to the naked eye (i.e., no need for head-mounts or goggles). Such an ability is useful for various applications, including scientific visualization, virtual restoration of cultural heritage, and display systems.

Our work has focused on three problems regarding appearance editing. First, we explore virtual restoration of real-world objects. Virtual restoration enables the appearance of cultural heritage to be modified without any permanent physical change to the object itself. Next, we focus on compensation compliancy. In general, not all colors are attainable given a particular appearance editing setup. We explore strategies to adjust the appearance editing setup to create compliant appearance edits. Finally, we wish to enhance the resolution and overall quality of appearance editing. This work involves accurate modeling of the projector-surface interaction.
Appearance and Compensation Compliancy

A desired target appearance may not always be possible given an appearance editing setup. This leads to errors in the resulting appearance (e.g., color shifting) which can lead to potentially misleading visualizations. In this work, we explore ways to increase the compensation compliancy, including discovering an optimal placement for the projector(s) and perceptually modifying the target appearance.
Resolution Enhancement

The quality of an appearance edit is directly related to the resolution achievable by the projectors available. Various factors affect a projector's resolution and radiant power, including the projector's distance to the object and the orientation of the projector to the object. In this work, we analyze the appearance editing setup and projector pixel interaction to improve the quality of our appearance edits. We also introduce a technique to swap quickly between different appearances without having to recalculate full compensation images.
Restoring the Past: Virtual Restoration of Real-World Objects

We present a system to virtually restore damaged or historically significant objects without needing to physically change the object in any way. This work addresses both creating a restored synthetic version of the image as viewed from a camera and projecting the appropriate light patterns using digital projectors to give the illusion of the physical object being restored. In collaboration with museums, the system has been used to restore several priceless artifacts ranging up to about 1000 years old.
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projects/appearance_editing.txt · Last modified: 2010/08/05 12:10 by ajlaw
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