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Automatic 3D Reconstruction of Scenes

Posted by Hemos on from the its-like-that-there-tv dept.

Neil Halelamien writes "New Scientist reports on a piece of software by MDRobotics called instant Scene modeler (iSM), which automatically generates 3D reconstructions of scenes, using a few hundred frames from a pair of ordinary video cameras. The software uses David Lowe's SIFT vision algorithm to quickly locate common features between sequential images, for use in the reconstruction; SIFT has also been useful for generating panoramas and object recognition. MDRobotics has a demo page showing the software being used for crime scene reconstruction, along with animated GIFs of input video and the resulting 3D model."

9 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Blade Runner Scene Machine by Lioner · · Score: 4, Funny

    Finally we can do what Harrison Ford can do... :-)

  2. I wonder if... by n0dalus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow I bet it's just like in CSI they will be able to zoom up 10000% on the digital image, 'sharpen' it and read all sorts of interesting things off the back of things after rotating them virtually.

  3. Coral Cache by PxM · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since slashdot will probably burn out the web server hosting images: http://www.mdrobotics.ca.nyud.net:8090/ism/behind. htm

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  4. Good Use for Importing Stationary Objects by fcolari · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Educationally, people could truly "walk around" in a virtual museum. This is lightyears ahead of QuickTime VR(?) where one simply can rotate about one point and zoom in or out.

    It's only going to work on stationary scenes, as that sleeping fellow showed us. Basically, anything from the Real World you want to "import" into VR will be much easier to do.

    If anyone likes FPS, you could model a map based on real scenery.

    Most inventions and technology came into being before people found a use for it. It just seems pretty darn cool if nothing else.

    --
    "The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces." --Aldo Leopold (Paraphrased)
  5. Sounds Bogus by menace3society · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This reminds me of the bit in Enemy of the State where the government operatives take the lingerie store security footage, and then use their computer to "rotate the camer 90 degrees." And on top of that, they then see something in the bag that wouldn't have been at all detectable from the actual camera's angle.

    It's pretty silly to suppose that this thing will be able to generate a 3-D representation of a scene without without getting highly-detailed footage of everything from every angle. Otherwise, it would just be a completely bogus modelling system to pull a fast one on people who don't know any better. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, although the original crime scene evidence photos don't show it, when you look rotate the angle and look at the far side of the desk, the defendent's fingerprints are clearly visible"

    1. Re:Sounds Bogus by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People have been working on this particular problem for a lot longer than you'd think and there have been methods for creating 3d meshes from 2d video for quite some time now, shown at siggraph, and so on. There are at least tens of books on this and related subjects. Anyway you are exaggerating the problem. Obviously it will not be able to get information from anything it can't see, and without moving around and through a scene all you're going to have is a bunch of contour maps with empty back sides. This is still a huge improvement over having no 3d data at all. It will immediately be a gigantic boon to compositing animators, who will be able to get depth cues from 2d video.

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  6. Damn patents. by PxM · · Score: 4, Informative

    From one of the links: The SIFT algorithm is restricted by patents in the United States and hence this software is not completely free to use. For details see the LICENSE file included in the distribution, before you start to use this software.

    Hopefully, they're liberal about the patent and will let noncommercial nonresearch applications use the algorithm. Otherwise, we would have to wait for the really interesting software to come out.

    A C# implementation with support for Mono is available to play with for anyone who is interested: http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~nowozin/libsift/
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  7. Re:open source implementation? by imroy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Autopano and Autopano-sift. I have't had good experiences with the SIFT-based software. They always tend to pick the most inappropriate points, like trees/leaves (that move between shots) and the middle of objects (where there aren't many features). I almost always have to go through and remove the bad points, adding in my own reliable ones (corners, unique features, etc). I just don't use them anymore because I actually spend less time if I do all the points myself manually. The GUI of Hugin usually saves me plenty of time already. It does a good job of picking the matching point when I click on one photo. That's all I need anymore.

  8. Set reconstruction from old movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Though the technology would need some additional improvements, it might be interesting to apply it to tracking shots in old movies (like Casablanca) and in addition to reconstructing the sets one could also replay a scene from a slighly different angle.

    The other slight modification would be to combine the possible modification (getting a slightly different angle from an existing tracking shot) and build a stereo 3D image of the shot or film segment.