How to Achieve Consistent, Controllable Highlights in 3D Makeup Rendering

Background

3D material makeup relies on highlights to enhance texture; this paper proposes an optimization method that enables fine‑grained control of highlights to create aesthetically pleasing 3D makeup.

01 3D Material Makeup Introduction

Makeup technology is essentially computer graphics: detect a face, compute a mesh, render the mesh, and blend the result onto the face image. 3D makeup includes sticker, custom, and material makeup, with material makeup favored for its realism. Highlights greatly enrich makeup texture.

02 Problem Description

Two facial models derived from the same person at different time frames have identical topology but different geometry, leading to inconsistent highlight positions and shapes under the same PBR lighting, which is physically correct but aesthetically undesirable.

03 Problem Analysis

Key factors affecting highlights are metallic, roughness, base color, light direction, normal vector, and view vector. Experiments show that only the normal vector influences highlight position and shape; other factors affect intensity or color but not geometry.

3.1 Lighting Models

Common models include Phong, PBR, and IBL. PBR is widely used; its BRDF depends on material roughness, metallic, base color, and vectors (n, v, l, h).

3.2 Material Influence

Metallic affects overall brightness, roughness controls highlight size, and base color determines highlight hue, but none alter highlight location or shape.

3.3 Light Vector Influence

Changing light direction changes illuminated regions but cannot adjust highlight geometry.

3.4 Geometry Influence

Using models with identical topology but different geometry shows that normals drive highlight differences; applying the same normal map to both models yields nearly identical highlights.

04 Highlight Optimization Scheme

Introduce a model‑space normal map into the rendering pipeline; designers provide the normal map to control highlight position and shape. Experiments demonstrate that swapping normal maps on the same model changes highlights dramatically, confirming that modifying normals alone can achieve any desired highlight effect.

05 Summary and Outlook

The proposed solution stabilizes highlights across different facial geometries and makes highlight position and shape controllable by leveraging normal maps. Future work will further explore physically‑based makeup rendering to create realistic yet aesthetically pleasing cosmetics.

References

https://google.github.io/filament/Filament.html

https://learnopengl-cn.github.io/

https://www.pbr-book.org/

https://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2013-shading-course/karis/s2013_pbs_epic_notes_v2.pdf