Exploiting Repetitions for Image-Based Rendering of Facades

Description

Abstract Street-level imagery is now abundant but does not have sufficient capture density to be usable for Image-Based Rendering (IBR) of facades. We present a method that exploits repetitive elements in facades – such as windows – to perform data augmentation, in turn improving camera calibration, reconstructed geometry and overall rendering quality for IBR. The main intuition behind our approach is that a few views of several instances of an element provide similar information to many views of a single instance of that element. We first select similar instances of an element from 3-4 views of a facade and transform them into a common coordinate system, creating a " platonic " element. We use this common space to refine the camera calibration of each view of each instance and to reconstruct a 3D mesh of the element with multi-view stereo, that we regularize to obtain a piecewise-planar mesh aligned with dominant image contours. Observing the same element under multiple views also allows us to identify reflective areas – such as glass panels – which we use at rendering time to generate plausible reflections using an environment map. Our detailed 3D mesh, augmented set of views, and reflection mask enable image-based rendering of much higher quality than results obtained using the input images directly.

Abstract

International audience

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