The future and current digital economy and society is based on the perceptual choice by the consumer of many real objects (cards, cosmetics, toys, etc.), but increasingly from digital simulations with a great photorealism. Due to the existence on the market of new and sophisticated
gonio-apparent pigments, with aesthetic and physic-chemical aspects changing according to the illumination and observation directions, nowadays, it is a current great challenge the simulation on digital media (displays, virtual reality, printing technologies), of objects, with different shape
and size, with the maximum perceptual realism. Regarding printing technologies, above all multi-channel and 3D printing technologies, needs to be checked the actual and future capacities to be used in the automotive sector in order to get more colored plastic pieces (add-on parts for the car
body) with the same or better aesthetic and physic-chemical features.
In this contribution, we will provide a general overview of a recent funded Spanish project called ADIREVGAO (Advanced DIgital REproduction of Visual Gonio-Appearance of Objects) for three years. One of the main
goals of this project is to go into detail about the reproduction capabilities of the gonio-appearance on several printing technologies, above all on multichannel inkjet and 3D printing (additive manufacturing, FDM technology).
Only the interplay of concepts and terminology (gonio-appearance,
measurement geometries, etc.), in addition to available commercial instruments, color & texture quality control by models, and the characterization techniques, and guidelines for testing gonio-apparent 3D printed materials, will be shown in this work.