View Generation with 3D Warping Using Depth Information for FTV

Abstract

Free viewpoint images can be generated from multi-view images using Ray-Space method. Ray-Space data requires ray interpolation so as to satisfy the plenoptic function. Ray interpolation is realized by estimating view-dependent depth. Depth estimation is usually costly process, thus it is desirable that this process is skipped from rendering process to achieve real-time rendering. This paper proposes a method to render a novel view image using multi-view images and depth maps which are computed in advance. Virtual viewpoint image is generated by 3D warping, which causes some problems that have not occurred in the method with view dependent depth estimation. We handled these problems by projecting depth map to virtual image plane first and perform post-filtering on the projected depth map. We succeeded in obtaining high quality arbitrary viewpoint images from relatively small number of cameras.