Surface Discretisation Effects on 3D Printed Surface Appearance

The spatial resolution of 3D printing is finite. The necessary discretisation of an object before printing produces a step-like surface structure that influences the appearance of the printed objects. To study the effect of this discretisation on specular reflections, we print surfaces at various oblique angles. This enables us to observe the step-like structure and its influence on reflected light. Based on the step-like surface structure, we develop a reflectance model describing the redistribution of the light scattered by the surface, and we study dispersion effects due to the wavelength dependency of the refractive index of the material. We include preliminary verification by comparing model predictions to photographs for different angles of observation.