When Shadows Become Interreflections

  • Authors:
  • M. S. Langer

  • Affiliations:
  • NEC Research Institute, 4 Independence Way, Princeton, NJ 08540

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Computer Vision - Special issue on computer vision research at NEC Research Institute
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

Shadows and interreflections are present in all real scenes andprovide a rich set of photometric cues for vision. In this paper, weshow how shadows and interreflections are intrinsically related.Shadows tend to occur in those parts of a scene in whichinterreflections have the largest gain. We provide several basicresults concerning this relationship in terms of the interreflectionmodes of a scene. We show that for a given scene, theinterreflection mode having the largest gain is a physicallyrealizable radiance function. We derive bounds on the gain of thismode and discuss how this mode is related to shadows. We analyze how well an n-bounce model of interreflectionsapproximates an infinite-bounce model and how shadows affect thisapproximation. Finally, we introduce a novel method for inferringsurface color in a uni-chromatic scene. The method is based on therelative contrast of the scene in different color channels.