Image-based rendering for photo-realistic visualization

Abstract

Digital models of objects have long stood synonymous for 3D models with fixed textures. More recently, image-based rendering has made its way to offer an effective alternative. Rather than producing a 3D model, views are created by interpolating between images taken from many different viewpoints. The advantages are that the resulting visualizations look very realistic and that a wider range of objects can be dealt with. One can go a step further and follow a similar strategy for the illumination direction: for every reference viewpoint, now take multiple images, each with a different illumination. Again, images for novel illumination directions follow from interpolation. But there is an obvious catch in that many, many images are needed, unless at least a crude 3D shape model and preferably also a model for the surface reflectance are used to support the interpolation from more sparsely taken images. Even then, the number of images needed remains appreciable. Hence, we present a dome to efficiently capture such images. Fortunately, it is possible to generate this crude 3D model, as well as the surface reflectance characteristics’ directly from the images. We describe methods to achieve this. Also, in order to make real-time visualization possible, all critical steps of the visualization pipeline are programmed on off-the-shelf graphics hardware. The dome provides an easy to use and structured acquisition procedure. Yet, the applicability of the algorithms is not limited to structured input. The images could, for example be taken with a hand-held camera.