Abstract
Gold is perceived in glossy surfaces with certain chromaticity ranges. Appearance of gold positively correlates with perceived glossiness (Matsumoto et al., APCV 2011) and also with the surface metallicity (Matsumoto et al., APCV 2012). These previous findings suggest that the visual system utilizes the chromaticity and glossiness or the metallicity of surface to perceive gold. Glossy plastic does not appear gold, which means that gold is perceived not based on glossiness only, but to some extent based on the factor that yields the surface metallicity. In the present study, we investigated the relation between perceptual degree of goldenness, the surface metallicity and glossiness in order to understand the perceptual mechanism for gold. We simulated metallic and non-metallic objects (sphere, Stanford Bunny and 26-faceted polyhedron) with 3DCG as stimuli in our experiments. The intensity of metallic and non-metallic images was morphed to make stimuli with different metallic levels (6 levels). The intensity of each morphed image was multiplied to be different in luminance levels (5 levels). The same chromaticity, which was obtained to make high degree of goldenness in our previous experiments, was used for all images. The observer performed the magnitude estimation of goldenness, the surface metallicity and glossiness. Our results show that when the surfaces were estimated somewhat golden, they were always evaluated as metallic. On the other hand, when the surfaces were evaluated as non-metallic but somewhat glossy, they were hardly rated with goldenness. These results indicate that perception of metallic surface is necessary for perception of gold. Moreover, as a result of partial correlation analysis, we found that the degree of goldenness positively correlated with the surface metallicity, but mostly not with glossiness. It is suggested that gold is perceived based on the factor in perceiving of the surface metallicity instead of glossiness.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014