Surface reconstruction and display from range and color data

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the problem of scanning both the color and geometry of real objects and displaying realistic images of the scanned objects from arbitrary viewpoints. We present a complete system that uses a stereo camera system with active lighting to scan the object surface geometry and color as visible from one point of view. Scans expressed in sensor coordinates are registered into a single object-centered coordinate system by aligning both the color and geometry where the scans overlap. The range data are integrated into a surface model using a robust hierarchical space carving method. The fit of the resulting approximate mesh to data is improved and the mesh structure is simplified using mesh optimization methods. Two methods are developed to do view-dependent display of the reconstructed surfaces. The first method integrates the geometric data into a single model as described above and projects the color data from the input images onto the surface. The second method models the scans separately as textured triangle meshes, and integrates the data during display by rendering several partial models from the current viewpoint and combining the images pixel by pixel.