ACM Transactions Graphics : 2008

A Perceptually Validated Model for Surface Depth Hallucination

Mashhuda Glencross, Gregory J.Ward, Francho Melendez, Caroline Jay, Jun Liu, and Roger Hubbold

The University of Manchester

The left image is a photograph of a Mayan carving under diffuse lighting, which was combined with a similar flash photo to derive a height field and albedo map for this surface. The middle image uses the derived model to render the same view with novel lighting. The rendering on the right shows an oblique close-up with a second novel lighting condition and added specularity.

Abstract

Capturing detailed surface geometry currently requires specialized equipment such as laser range scanners, which despite their high accuracy, leave gaps in the surfaces that must be reconciled with photographic capture for relighting applications. Using only a standard digital camera and a single view, we present a method for recovering models of predominantly diffuse textured surfaces that can be plausibly relit and viewed from any angle under any illumination. Our multiscale shape-from-shading technique uses diffuse-lit/flash-lit image pairs to produce an albedo map and textured height field. Using two lighting conditions enables us to subtract one from the other to estimate albedo. In the absence of a flash-lit image of a surface for which we already have a similar exemplar pair, we approximate both albedo and diffuse shading images using histogram matching. Our depth estimation is based on local visibility. Unlike other depth-from-shading approaches, all operations are performed on the diffuse shading image in image space, and we impose no constant albedo restrictions. An experimental validation shows our method works for a broad range of textured surfaces, and viewers are frequently unable to identify our results as synthetic in a randomized presentation. Furthermore, in side-by-side comparisons, subjects found a rendering of our depth map equally plausible to one generated from a laser range scan. We see this method as a significant advance in acquiring surface detail for texturing using a standard digital camera, with applications in architecture, archaeological reconstruction, games and special effects.

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Bibtex

@article{Glencross:2008:PVM:1360612.1360658, author = {Glencross, Mashhuda and Ward, Gregory J. and Melendez, Francho and Jay, Caroline and Liu, Jun and Hubbold, Roger}, title = {A Perceptually Validated Model for Surface Depth Hallucination}, journal = {ACM Trans. Graph.}, volume = {27}, year = {2008}, publisher = {ACM}, }