Stereological techniques for solid textures

We describe the use of traditional stereological methods to synthesize 3D solid textures from 2D images of existing materials. We first illustrate our approach for aggregate materials of spherical particles, and then extend the technique to apply to particles of arbitrary shapes. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach with side-by-side comparisons of a real material and a synthetic model with its appearance parameters derived from its physical counterpart. Unlike ad hoc methods for texture synthesis, stereology provides a disciplined, systematic basis for predicting material structure with well-defined assumptions.