A typical human with a normal vision easily identifies materials and effortlessly characterizes their look. However, little is known about the visual mechanisms and the underlying processes giving us this remarkable ability. The visual appearance of a material is generally classified into four appearance attributes (colour, gloss, texture, translucency) that interact with each other. This interaction is very complex and processed by the brain together with other information such as memory and viewing environment, to finally determine the perceived appearance of a surface or object. The concept of visual appearance is currently far from fully understood, neither from the metrological nor perceptual point of view. Research is in this field is thus needed ranging from fundamental aspects to high impact applications in emerging fields such as 3D printing, computer graphics and product design.
The INTPART project Material Appearance Network for Education and Research (MANER) is helping research groups within and beyond the ongoing FRIPRO Toppforsk project Measuring and Understanding Visual Appearance (MUVApp) to establish and strengthen long term relations for collaborative research and education activities within the field of material appearance measurement and understanding. By partnering with world leading researchers and institutions in China, Japan, India, and USA, MANER is supporting the strategies of internationalization and excellence in teaching and research of NTNU in general, and of the Norwegian Colour and Visual Computing Laboratory (Colourlab) at NTNU in Gjøvik in particular. Collaboration between the project partners is within the scope of research and education related to the field of material appearance.
Three long-term mobilities have taken place with the support of the MANER project. The collaborative research projects with Yale University in the USA and Chiba University in Japan, have contributed to the topics of glossiness perception and color contrast adaptation, respectively. Furthermore, a networking meeting in Chiba, Japan, and a MANER workshop organized at NTNU with the involvement of the US partner, have further fostered long-term research collaboration between NTNU and the other members of the MANER network. Finally, the MANER training school organized at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay provided an opportunity to involved researchers to improve their machine learning skills for material appearance applications, as well as to facilitate planning collaborative research between NTNU and the partner institution in India.
While some training schools, conferences, and workshops have already been organized, along with the mobility of fellow researchers, students, and staff primarily associated with the MUVApp project, more events are planned to take place within the timeframe of the project. In September 2021, the MANER group has established a "MANER Conference Steering Committee" which will organize a series of MANER Conferences in the upcoming years. These conferences will be organized in conjunction with established international conferences in different research fields for which the topic of material appearance is relevant.
New collaborative master courses and programs are currently being developed. Moreover, the planned training activities will disseminate knowledge and improved understanding about material appearance perception and measurement. Thus, MANER is significantly enhancing the MUVApp research and extending its scope to include educational collaboration.
The INTPART project Material Appearance Network for Education and Research (MANER) will enable research groups within and beyond the ongoing FRIPRO Toppforsk project Measuring and Understanding Visual Appearance (MUVApp) to establish and strengthen long term relations for collaborative research and education activities within the field of material appearance measurement and understanding. The visual appearance of a material is generally classified into four appearance attributes (colour, gloss, texture, translucency) that interact with each other. This interaction is very complex and processed by the brain together with other information such as memory and viewing environment, to finally determine the perceived appearance of a surface or object. The concept of visual appearance is currently far from fully understood, neither from the metrological nor perceptual point of view. Research is in this field is thus needed ranging from fundamental aspects to high impact applications in emerging fields such as 3D printing and product design.
By partnering with world leading researchers and institutions in China, Japan, India, and USA, MANER will support the strategies of internationalization and excellence in teaching and research of NTNU in general, and of the Norwegian Colour and Visual Computing Laboratory (Colourlab) at NTNU in Gjøvik in particular. Collaboration between the project partners will be within the scope of research and education related to the field of material appearance. Training schools, conferences and workshops are planned, along with mobility of fellow researchers, students and staff primarily associated with MUVApp project. New collaborative master courses and programs will be developed. The planned training activities will disseminate knowledge and improved understanding about material appearance perception and measurement. Thus MANER will significantly enhance the MUVApp research and extend its scope to include educational collaboration.
