Light of Normals: Unified Feature Representation for Universal
  Photometric Stereo
Authors: name: Hong Li; name: Houyuan Chen; name: Chongjie Ye; name: Zhaoxi Chen; name: Bohan Li; name: Shaocong Xu; name: Xianda Guo; name: Xuhui Liu; name: Yikai Wang; name: Baochang Zhang; name: Satoshi Ikehata; name: Boxin Shi; name: Anyi Rao; name: Hao Zhao
Published: 2025-06-23 17:53:11

Abstract: Universal photometric stereo (PS) aims to recover high-quality surface
normals from objects under arbitrary lighting conditions without relying on
specific illumination models. Despite recent advances such as SDM-UniPS and Uni
MS-PS, two fundamental challenges persist: 1) the deep coupling between varying
illumination and surface normal features, where ambiguity in observed intensity
makes it difficult to determine whether brightness variations stem from
lighting changes or surface orientation; and 2) the preservation of
high-frequency geometric details in complex surfaces, where intricate
geometries create self-shadowing, inter-reflections, and subtle normal
variations that conventional feature processing operations struggle to capture
accurately.