Structured light 3D scanning in the presence of global illumination

Abstract

Global illumination effects such as inter-reflections, diffusion and sub-surface scattering severely degrade the performance of structured light-based 3D scanning. In this paper, we analyze the errors caused by global illumination in structured light-based shape recovery. Based on this analysis, we design structured light patterns that are resilient to individual global illumination effects using simple logical operations and tools from combinatorial mathematics. Scenes exhibiting multiple phenomena are handled by combining results from a small ensemble of such patterns. This combination also allows us to detect any residual errors that are corrected by acquiring a few additional images. Our techniques do not require explicit separation of the direct and global components of scene radiance and hence work even in scenarios where the separation fails or the direct component is too low. Our methods can be readily incorporated into existing scanning systems without significant overhead in terms of capture time or hardware. We show results on a variety of scenes with complex shape and material properties and challenging global illumination effects.