3D printing has become an increasingly popular and affordable technology in recent years due to rapid technological advances. One such advancement is the ability to print a single object with multiple colors. Traditional printers work on the assumption that the surface they are printing to is flat, which further assumes that surface geometry has a negligible effect on appearance. The International Color Consortium (ICC) builds profiles allowing for color communication amongst devices, including traditional 2D printers. The ICC does not currently have practices in place to build profiles for color 3D printers, due in part to several unknown parameters affecting the appearance of 3D printed objects. One such unknown is surface texture. To test the effect of surface texture on the color appearance of 3D printed objects, 3D models were built digitally with goniochromatic effects in mind and then printed using a color 3D printer. Spectral radiance and BRDF measurements of the 3D printed samples were taken to test for changes in appearance. It was found that surface texture does have a measurable effect on the color appearance of 3D printed objects, which is an important first step in creating a characterization space for color 3D printers.
Matt Ronnenberg, Susan Farnand, "The Effect of Surface Texture on Color Appearance of 3D Printed Objects" in Proc. IS&T 26th Color and Imaging Conf., 2018, pp 128 - 133, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-2629.2018.26.128