User-guided modulation of rendering techniques for detail inspection

Understanding intricate details of carved models, for example ones prevalent in cultural heritage applications, is often difficult from renderings using traditional illumination models. A number of illustrative rendering techniques are known, but each works well only for some models. We present a rendering system that combines these techniques in an attempt to make the visualization more comprehensible given any context. In particular, our system learns user´s visual preferences using exemplars from a domain and applies an appropriate combination of the basis techniques to new meshes from that domain. Given a polygonal mesh, the system applies different rendering techniques to different parts based on local features in order to enhance the overall appearance.