Neural networks to generate appearance-responsive material map sets in digital graphical environments

A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying program code for generating an appearance-responsive material map, the program code comprising instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform:

• accessing source material data, the source material data including material data that describes one or more surface appearance values associated with a three-dimensional (“3D”) graphical object;
• identifying, via a trained material map generation neural network, a combination of features from the source material data, wherein the trained material map generation neural network is trained to select the combination of features based on a detail level;
• generating an appearance-responsive material map that includes a combination of material data from the source material data, the combination of material data associated with the identified combination of features;
• and
• providing the appearance-responsive material map to a rendering engine that is configured to render the 3D graphical object having a visual appearance that is based on the appearance-responsive material map and a viewpoint distance.

A method for generating an appearance-responsive material map, the method comprising operations that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform:

• accessing source material data, the source material data including material data that describes one or more surface appearance values associated with a three-dimensional (“3D”) graphical object;
• identifying, via a material map generation neural network, a combination of features from the source material data, wherein the material map generation neural network is trained to select the combination of features based on a detail level;
• generating an appearance-responsive material map that includes a combination of material data from the source material data, the combination of material data associated with the identified combination of features;
• providing the appearance-responsive material map to a rendering engine that is configured to render the 3D graphical object having a visual appearance that is based on the appearance-responsive material map and a viewpoint distance;
• receiving, from the rendering engine, the rendered 3D graphical object;
• calculating a difference value based on a comparison of the 3D graphical object to a groundtruth graphical object;
• and
• providing the difference value to the material map generation neural network, wherein the material map generation neural network modifies one or more parameters based on the difference value.