3D world from 2D photos

Abstract

A large number of the world's cultural heritage sites and landscapes have been lost over time due to the progress of urbanization. Digital archive projects that digitize these landscapes as virtual 3D worlds have become more popular. Although a large numbers of studies have been made on reconstructing 3D virtual worlds, the previous methods have been insufficient, because they require significant effort. In this study, we propose a new method of reconstructing a 3D virtual world only from photo images that requires little intervention. The idea is to reduce the learning curve of the software need and automate the method as much as possible so that we can digitize as many heritage sites as needed. In our approach, we first reconstruct 3D models from single 2D photos using an image based modeling and rendering(IBMR) technique. After reconstructing models from all the available photos, we connect the 3D models into one unified 3D virtual world. Specifically, we implemented a seamless connection algorithm that supports free viewpoint translation. And we demonstrated the reconstruction of part of a cultural heritage site based on our system. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.