Acquisition and representation of pearlescent paints using an image-based goniospectrophotometer

The use of pearlescent paints has grown significantly for many industrial products, due to their special visual effect, which originates from optical interference between many small pearlescent platelets. This makes the visual appearance of pearlescent paints vary with the light and view direction. Since pearlescent paints are very sensitive to specific wavelength bands, multispectrum-based representation methods that use spectral distributions give us more accurate image synthesis of them than does the use of RGB-based ones. In this paper, we present a novel image-based goniospectrophotometer system and its characterization method to acquire the spectral bidirectional reflectance distribution functions (BRDFs) for realistic image synthesis of pearlescent paints by combining two promising technologies, namely, high-dynamic-range images and multispectral images. The capability of our system is demonstrated by generating rendering results from four different material samples and comparing them with the RGB-based results and fully measured BRDF data. (c) 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [DOI: 10.1117/1.3407431]