Optical property-based rendering of 3D prints

Area of Science:

• Additive Manufacturing
• Computational Imaging
• Optical Physics

Background:

• Realistic color reproduction in 3D printing is crucial for design fidelity.
• Accurate color prediction requires advanced rendering methods based on material optical properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a fully optical property-based pipeline for physically correct color rendering of 3D-printed objects.
• To achieve color prediction accuracy nearly indistinguishable from final printed samples.

Main Methods:

• Measurement of spectrally resolved absorption and reduced scattering coefficients using an integrating sphere setup.
• Application of a spectral Monte Carlo path tracing simulation to model light transfer through printed objects.
• Utilizing intrinsic optical properties: reduced scattering coefficient, absorption coefficient, refractive index, and scattering anisotropy factor.

Main Results:

• Achieved color difference (CIE ΔE2000) values below 2.0, indicating high accuracy.
• Renderings accurately reproduced colors of validation samples printed on a Stratasys PolyJet system.
• The pipeline demonstrated precision for both highly scattering and nearly non-scattering materials.

Conclusions:

• The developed pipeline offers a robust tool for predicting and optimizing the color appearance of 3D-printed objects.
• Broad applicability across diverse printing systems and material compositions.
• Eliminates the need for time- and cost-intensive physical test prints.