English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Report

Perception of shape from shading on a cloudy day

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons84904

Langer,  MS
Department Human Perception, Cognition and Action, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons83839

Bülthoff,  HH
Department Human Perception, Cognition and Action, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)

MPIK-TR-73.pdf
(Publisher version), 246KB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Langer, M., & Bülthoff, H.(1999). Perception of shape from shading on a cloudy day (73). Tübingen, Germany: Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0013-E63B-2
Abstract
The human visual system has a remarkable ability to interpret smooth patterns of light and shade on a surface in terms of 3-D surface geometry. Classical studies of shape-from-shading have assumed that surface luminance depends on the local surface orientation. This classical shading model holds, for example, on a sunny day. A common
situation in which the classical model fails to hold, however, is a diffuse lighting condition such as on a cloudy day. Here we report on the first set of psychophysical experiments that explicitly address
perception of shape-from-shading under diffuse lighting. Our main findings are that depth discrimination under diffuse lighting is superior to that predicted by a classical sunny day model, and by a model in which depth varies with perceived luminance i.e. dark means deep. We find that performance is correlated with the latter model,
however, under both diffuse source and point source lighting. The results imply that the visual system uses multiple models when perceiving shape-from-shading.