Photometric stereo with non-parametric and spatially-varying reflectance

Neil Gordon Alldrin, Todd E. Zickler, David J. Kriegman

Abstract: We present a method for simultaneously recovering shape and spatially varying reflectance of a surface from photometric stereo images. The distinguishing feature of our approach is its generality; it does not rely on a specific parametric reflectance model and is therefore purely ldquodata-drivenrdquo. This is achieved by employing novel bi-variate approximations of isotropic reflectance functions. By combining this new approximation with recent developments in photometric stereo, we are able to simultaneously estimate an independent surface normal at each point, a global set of non-parametric ldquobasis materialrdquo BRDFs, and per-point material weights. Our experimental results validate the approach and demonstrate the utility of bi-variate reflectance functions for general non-parametric appearance capture.