Photographers and lighting designers set up lighting environments that best depict objects and human figures to convey key aspects of the visual appearance of various materials, following rules drawn from experience. Understanding which lighting environment is best adapted to convey which key aspects of materials is an important question in the field of human vision. The endless range of natural materials and lighting environments poses a major problem in this respect. We present a systematic approach to make this problem tractable for lighting–material interactions, using optics-based models composed of canonical lighting and material modes. Results demonstrate that a system of canonical modes spanning the natural range of lighting and materials provides a good basis to study lighting–material interactions in their full natural ecology.
A screenshot of Blender during the 3-D modeling process. (Zhang et al., 2016) 
A screenshot of MaxwellRender during the rendering process. Here, a customised texture map is used to represent glittery material. (Zhang et al., 2016) 
Real v.s. Rendered. (A) Photographed set in studio lighting. (B) Rendered image set in Debevec’s “Eucalyptus Grove” image-based lighting. (C) Rendered image set in Debevec’s “Grace Cathedral” image-based lighting. (Zhang et al., 2016) 
The real “bird” set and the photography setup. (Zhang et al., 2019) 
The rendered “bird” set. (Zhang et al., 2019) 
Three light maps vary in 15 orientations, and examples of the three shapes, rendered with the specular material and the Grace-new light map. (Zhang et al., 2020) 
Example of three shapes, rendered with the specular material and the Grace-new light map in 15 orientations (Zhang et al., 2020) 
Example of three shapes, rendered with the glittery material (Zhang et al., 2020) 
Example of three shapes, rendered with the velvety material (Zhang et al., 2020)
