Shape from Shading. I: Surface Curvature and Orientation

The human visual system makes effective use of shading alone in recovering the shape of objects. Pictures of sculptures are readily interpreted—a situation where shading provides virtually the sole cue to shape. However, shading has been considered a poor cue to depth in comparison with retinal disparity and kinetic cues. Curvature discrimination thresholds were measured with the use of a surface-alignment task for a range of surface curvatures from 0.16 cm⁻¹ to 1.06 cm⁻¹. Weber fractions were around 0.1, demonstrating considerable precision in this task. Weber fractions did not vary substantially as a function of surface curvature. Rotation of the light source around the line of sight had no effect on curvature discrimination but rotation towards the viewer increased discrimination thresholds. In contrast, slant discrimination declined with rotation of the light-source vector towards the viewpoint. When a band-limited random grey-level texture was mapped onto the sphere, curvature discrimination thresholds increased gradually as a function of texture contrast, even though texture and shading provided consistent cues to depth. Adding texture also increased slant discrimination thresholds, demonstrating that texture can act as a source of noise in shape-from-shading tasks.

The psychophysical findings have been used to evaluate whether current algorithms for shape from shading in computer vision could serve as models of human three-dimensional shape analysis and to highlight low-level intramodular interactions between depth cues. It is demonstrated that, in the case of surfaces defined by shading, curvature descriptions are primary and do not depend upon the prior encoding of surface orientation, and Koenderink's local-shape index is suggested as an alternative intermediate representation of surface shape in the human visual system.