3D Photography Using Shadows in Dual-Space Geometry

  • Authors:
  • Jean-Yves Bouguet;Pietro Perona

  • Affiliations:
  • California Institute of Technology, 136-93, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. bouguetj@vision.caltech.edu;California Institute of Technology, 136-93, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA and Università di Padova, Italy. perona@vision.caltech.edu

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Computer Vision
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

A simple and inexpensive approachfor extracting the three-dimensional shape of objects is presented.It is based on ‘weak structured lighting’. It requires very littlehardware besides the camera: a light source (a desk-lamp or the sun),a stick and a checkerboard. The object, illuminated by the lightsource, is placed on a stage composed of a ground plane and a backplane; the camera faces the object. The user moves the stick in frontof the light source, casting a moving shadow on the scene. The 3Dshape of the object is extracted from the spatial and temporallocation of the observed shadow. Experimental results are presentedon five different scenes (indoor with a desk lamp and outdoor with thesun) demonstrating that the error in reconstructing the surface isless than 0.5% of the size of the object. A mathematical formalismis proposed that simplifies the notation and keep the algebracompact. A real-time implementation of the system is alsopresented.