Perceiving the shape and material properties of 3D surfaces

Our visual experience of the world relies on the interaction of light with the different substances, surfaces, and objects in our environment. These optical interactions generate images that contain a conflated mixture of different scene variables, which our visual system must somehow disentangle to extract information about the shape and material properties of the world. Such problems have historically been considered to be ill-posed, but recent work suggests that there are complex patterns of covariation in light that co-specify the 3D shape and material properties of surfaces. This work provides new insights into how the visual system acquired the ability to solve problems that have historically been considered intractable.