Overview
The process of extracting surface characteristics from materials by capturing images of subjects lit from different angles has been applied in areas such as cultural heritage and fashion for years. Possibly the most popular technique is known as RTI (also known as Polynomial Texture Mapping).
Museum institutions have extensively used RTI, for example to increase legibility of text on ancient artefacts. High end scanners like the Scope D50 powered by Swiss startup Truvis are used in museum labs. Similarly, scanners like the xTex by Vizoo are employed to scan materials across different industries.
Unity ArtEngine opens many possibilities by allowing creators to implement similar methods with basic photographic equipment to create their own materials. This video was created to showcase possible implementations of material scans processed using Unity ArtEngine for Fashion, VR, AR, and Virtual Production.
Update (July 2022): Unity ArtEngine has been discontinued