Recreating Cities Using Online Photos

Roland Piquepaille writes "The billion of images available from a site like Flickr has stimulated the imagination of many researchers. After designing tools using Flickr to edit your photos, another team at the University of Washington (UW) is using our vacation photos to create 3D models of world landmarks. But recreating original scenes is challenging because all the photos we put on Flickr and similar sites don't exhibit the same quality. With such a large number of pictures available, the researchers have been able to reconstruct with great accuracy virtual 3D model of landmarks, including Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the Statue of Liberty in New York City."

Comments

This just in...

[It doesn't come easy]

Online photos of any physical location on any planet in the local galactic group are now forbidden due to the possibility that the photos might be used by terrorists or those who may be helping terrorists to plan terrorist attacks on said locations.

By order of Ultra Super Secret Chief Intelligence Officer, Department of Homeland Security

Home use

[Cillian]

I wonder how many photos it needs of an object to produce a decent model and if the software will ever be released to the public - it would be amazing to be able to produce a 3d model of an object just by snapping a bunch of photos from different angles and bunging them into a piece of software. (I know there are things to create a model using a video camera and a turntable, but that's not quite as easy as being able to grab your camera anywhere and make a model.)

Re:How about telling us what it's called?

[Aaron England]

Is Photosynth "owned" by Microsoft? I thought Microsoft only acquired Seadragon and that Photosynth was a joint project between UW and Microsoft.

Nope, not photosynth...

[tommyhj]

This has nothing to do with the Photosynth/seadragon project, other than the fact that both teams use a whole bunch of different photos of the same object/setting.

This approach tries to make the actual 3D objects from a bunch of 2D photos of varying quality. Photosynth just tried to MAP the photos in a rough 3D space. Making the actual 3D model to any degree of accuracy is really a challenge when you can't control the input images.

The goal is different in the two cases, but they should definitely get together and exchange technologies and algorithms, because I SO much want this tech built into Google Earth!!

Re:How about telling us what it's called?

[BertieBaggio]

Mod parent up. I thought MS had bought both, but Photosynth is collaborative research by Noah Snavely (undergrad at UW), Steve Seitz (also UW), and Richard Szeliski (from Microsoft Research). Maybe in six months time I'll be retroactively correct when they do buy it...

(from http://labs.live.com/photosynth/ and http://labs.live.com/photosynth/aboutus.html)

Warsaw

[flyingfsck]

After the 2nd war, Warsaw was rebuilt from photos. If you visit Warsaw today, you'd think that it is an old city. In fact, it is all new, the Poles just like it that way.

Re:Does it work with people?

[Squalish]

We certainly have software that can take a video of static objects and turn it into a 3d scene.

We have, in TFA, software that can take frames of static objects, remove the dynamic objects among them, and leave us with a 3d scene.

We probably have software that can interpolate a static object which is bounding a nonstatic/elastic layer (the shape of a statue under a swaying tarp, the dimensions of a box inside a grocery bag someone is swinging).

We probably do not, however, have software that can efficiently calculate the at-rest dimensions of an elastic, mobile object(Jessica Alba) beneath a nonstatic/elastic layer (clothes). We've just barely reached the point where we can depict the behavior of the squishy, bony, muscular, hairy human body accurately, much less interpolate a hidden body.

One wonders what it would cost to develop such software to the satisfaction of a pervert, compared to what it would cost to simply fund a movie where the pervert gets to do this.