The Role of Subsurface Scattering in Glossiness Perception

Abstract

This study investigates the potential impact of subsurface light transport on gloss perception for the purposes of broadening our understanding of visual appearance in computer graphics applications. Gloss is an important attribute for characterizing material appearance. We hypothesize that subsurface scattering of light impacts the glossiness perception. However, gloss has been traditionally studied as a surface-related quality and the findings in the state-of-the-art are usually based on fully opaque materials, although the visual cues of glossiness can be impacted by light transmission as well. To address this gap and to test our hypothesis, we conducted psychophysical experiments and found that subjects are able to tell the difference in terms of gloss between stimuli that differ in subsurface light transport but have identical surface qualities and object shape. This gives us a clear indication that subsurface light transport contributes to a glossy appearance. Furthermore, we conducted additional experiments and found that the contribution of subsurface scattering to gloss varies across different shapes and levels of surface roughness. We argue that future research on gloss should include transparent and translucent media and to extend the perceptual models currently limited to surface scattering to more general ones inclusive of subsurface light transport.