Time-varying surface appearance: acquisition, modeling and rendering

For computer graphics rendering, we generally assume that the appearance of surfaces remains static over time. Yet, there are a number of natural processes that cause surface appearance to vary dramatically, such as burning of wood, wetting and drying of rock and fabric, decay of fruit skins, and corrosion and rusting of steel and copper. In this paper, we take a significant step towards measuring, modeling, and rendering time-varying surface appearance. We describe the acquisition of the first time-varying database of 26 samples, encompassing a variety of natural processes including burning, drying, decay, and corrosion. Our main technical contribution is a Space-Time Appearance Factorization (STAF). This model factors space and time-varying effects. We derive an overall temporal appearance variation characteristic curve of the specific process, as well as space-dependent textures, rates, and offsets. This overall temporal curve controls different spatial locations evolve at the different rates, causing spatial patterns on the surface over time. We show that the model accurately represents a variety of phenomena. Moreover, it enables a number of novel rendering applications, such as transfer of the time-varying effect to a new static surface, control to accelerate time evolution in certain areas, extrapolation beyond the acquired sequence, and texture synthesis of time-varying appearance.