The assumed light direction for perceiving shape from shading

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 v...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: APGV
• Authors: James P. O'Shea, Martin S. Banks, Maneesh Agrawala
• Keywords: APGV 2008, Light Direction, Surface Orientation, Viewing Direction, Visualization