A Handheld, Light-Adaptive Artwork Viewer Using BRDF-Based Real-Time Relighting

초록

Digital art viewing environments have greatly improved access to artworks; however, they often fail to reproduce the optical appearance and material qualities perceived when viewing physical artworks. In previous work, we introduced a handheld artwork viewer that enables viewers to physically hold an artwork and naturally adjust viewing distance and viewpoint through bodily movement, positioning handheld viewing between physical display and screen-based digital presentation. Building on this concept, this paper presents an environment-adaptive handheld artwork viewer incorporating BRDF-based real-time relighting. The proposed system integrates a camera-equipped tablet device with high-quality digitized artwork data to capture ambient lighting conditions in real time and estimate both global illumination characteristics and localized, directional lighting variations. Based on these estimates, environment-adaptive BRDF-based relighting is applied to the displayed artwork. Unlike conventional digital viewing approaches that primarily respond to uniform changes in illuminance or color temperature, the proposed system accounts for directional lighting and spatial brightness variations, enabling the reproduction of lighting-dependent visual effects such as shadows, highlights, and localized luminance variations that are characteristic of physical artworks. Through real-time adaptation to surrounding lighting conditions, the system enhances optical realism and partially restores material and environmental qualities diminished in conventional digital viewing environments. This work demonstrates the potential of handheld, environment-adaptive displays to bridge physical, digital, and virtual modes of art appreciation.

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