Three-Dimensional Multiscale Texture Synthesis

Traditional methods for texture synthesis can only capture a limited band of spatial scales. If we wish to synthesize a texture at a variety of zoom levels, an impractical high input resolution must be required. In this paper, we present a new method for synthesizing real-world 3D surface textures with different spatial scales. We only require as few as three low-resolution input images with near Lambertian reflectance. Then we can generate two surface gradient maps and an albedo map by Photometric Stereo to show 3D surface texture characteristics and accordingly to extend the 2D multiscale texture synthesis algorithm to the three-dimensional domain. Finally, we produce synthesized multiscale surface texture with varied illumination directions.

I. Introduction

Research into texture synthesis is normally concerned with learning and generation of 2D images of texture. However, real world textures are seldom flat and may consist of rough surface geometry and various reflectance properties. These textures are called 3D surface texture. Fig. 1 illustrates the dramatic effect that varying illumination direction can have on images of a 3D surface texture.