Highlight Microdisparity for Improved Gloss Depiction

Human stereo perception of glossy materials is substantially different from the perception of diffuse surfaces: A single point on a diffuse object appears the same for both eyes, whereas it appears different to both eyes on a specular object. As highlights are blurry reflections of light sources they have depth themselves, which is different from the depth of the reflecting surface. We call this difference in depth impression the ``highlight disparity''. Due to artistic motivation, for technical reasons, or because of incomplete data, highlights often have to be depicted on-surface, without any disparity. However, it has been shown that a lack of disparity decreases the perceived glossiness and authenticity of a material. To remedy this contradiction, our work introduces a technique for depiction of glossy materials, which improves over simple on-surface highlights, and avoids the problems of physical highlights. Our technique is computationally simple, can be easily integrated in an existing (GPU) shading system, and allows for local and interactive artistic control