I suppose you have noted a lack of depth solution in low-contrast areas of your object. Some ideas for adding unique registration points to the surface, under ambient lighting conditions:
- Tune your stereo depth algorithm settings, especially block size, and noise filtering. If you can tune illumination for best contrast, that's best. Try a semiglobal block match algorithm.
- Affix pigment to the surface, ideally high contrast and matte. This works in a wide range of ambient lighting conditions. This is similar to 3d motion capture techniques used for actor's performance to be used to animate a model.
- Illuminate the surface with a random high-contrast pattern projector. This works best you have control over the general illumination of the item, output power of the pattern proejctor, the surface is non-reflective, high-albedo, and at a range of distances so that illumination light doesn't saturate at far or near range.
- Combine multiple depth solutions illuminated by different frame-synchronized light sources surrounding the object. This has some features in common with optical flow techniques and optical image scanners with moving illumination source.
its unclear, what you mean, -- a visualization, like a heatmap ?