Light field rendering

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A number of techniques have been proposed for flying through scenes by redisplaying previously rendered or digitized views. Techniques have also been proposed for interpolating between views by warping input images, using depth information or correspondences between multiple images. In this paper, we describe a simple and robust method for generating new views from arbitrary camera positions without depth information or fea- ture matching, simply by combining and resampling the available images. The key to this technique lies in interpreting the input images as 2D slices of a 4D function - the light field. This func- tion completely characterizes the flow of light through unob- structed space in a static scene with fixed illumination. We describe a sampled representation for light fields that allows for both efficient creation and display of inward and out- ward looking views. We hav e created light fields from large arrays of both rendered and digitized images. The latter are acquired using a video camera mounted on a computer-controlled gantry. Once a light field has been created, new views may be constructed in real time by extracting slices in appropriate direc- tions. Since the success of the method depends on having a high sample rate, we describe a compression system that is able to compress the light fields we have generated by more than a factor of 100:1 with very little loss of fidelity. We also address the issues of antialiasing during creation, and resampling during slice extrac- tion.

This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit: