Displaying shiny objects under virtual lighting

This paper describes an extension of Image-Based Rendering (IBR) to represent the specularity of a real object in a virtual environment. A captured image of all object contains several kinds of physical information; its shape, color, texture, specularity and the lighting condition. This paper is intended as all investigation of how to preserve the specularity of an object, which is considerably sensitive to the lighting condition. Like IBR, it takes all image set by changing a lighting pattern electronically with a PC projector. When displaying the object, it re-calls the image set and does image retrieval of the most suitable image according to a user assigned lighting condition. As the user is able to change the lighting condition virtually, the appearance with highlight and specularity under the virtual lighting condition is produced on a monitor. Also using a camera observing the real global lighting, the new display can import it into the virtual space and shows the object under pseudo real lighting. The proposed imaging techniques are applicable to virtual museum or digital archives.