Appearance Capture and Modeling of Human Teeth

We present a system specifically designed for capturing the optical properties of live human teeth such that they can be realistically re-rendered in computer graphics.

Recreating the appearance of humans in virtual environments for the purpose of movie, video game, or other types of production involves the acquisition of a geometric representation of the human body and its scattering parameters which express the interaction between the geometry and light propagated throughout the scene. Teeth appearance is defined not only by the light and surface interaction, but also by its internal geometry and the intra-oral environment, posing its own unique set of challenges. Therefore, we present a system specifically designed for capturing the optical properties of live human teeth such that they can be realistically re-rendered in computer graphics. We acquire our data in vivo in a conventional multiple camera and light source setup and use exact geometry segmented from intra-oral scans. To simulate the complex interaction of light in the oral cavity during inverse rendering we employ a novel pipeline based on derivative path tracing with respect to both optical properties and geometry of the inner dentin surface. The resulting estimates of the global derivatives are used to extract parameters in a joint numerical optimization. The final appearance faithfully recreates the acquired data and can be directly used in conventional path tracing frameworks for rendering virtual humans.