Capturing 3D Surfaces Simply With a Flash Camera

MojoKid writes with this excerpt from Hot Hardware (linking to a video demonstration): "Creating 3D maps and worlds can be extremely labor intensive and time consuming. Also, the final result might not be all that accurate or realistic. A new technique developed by scientists at The University of Manchester's School of Computer Science and Dolby Canada, however, might make capturing depth and textures for 3D surfaces as simple as shooting two pictures with a digital camera — one with flash and one without. First an image of a surface is captured without flash. The problem is that the different colors of a surface also reflect light differently, making it difficult to determine if the brightness difference is a function of depth or color. By taking a second photo with flash, however, the accurate colors of all visible portions of the surface can be captured. The two captured images essentially become a reflectance map (albedo) and a depth map (height field)."

Comments

Amateurs.

[bigtallmofo]

Creating 3D maps and worlds can be extremely labor intensive and time consuming.

Bah! I completed my last project in exactly 6 days and used nothing but voice commands. It turned out so well I sat on my couch and ate Cheetos the entire next day. Today, there are over 6 billion users and we're only now starting to run into scalability issues.

-God

.

Re:Amateurs.

[sm62704]

Yeah, but look at how bloated your operating systemn is!

Re:Amateurs.

[clarkkent09]

I hear your support is terrible though. People practically have to beg on their knees to get their problems solved

Re:Amateurs.

[eln]

Your project is a case study in bad management, though. Sure, you completed the whole thing in six days, but what are we left with? Documentation that's cryptic at best, and literally billions of bugs.

Re:Amateurs.

[ajlitt]

And don't get me started on that unhandled divide-by-zero exception!

Re:Amateurs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gameplay sucks, just one endless grind.

Re:Amateurs.

[spun]

Obviously, you haven't unlocked the right minigame. It's a short game, but it makes grinding fun.

Re:Amateurs.

[famebait]

He does at least seem to fix hacking vulnerabilities though. According to accounts there used to be a lot more magic about only a few centuries ago. Or maybe the talent just matured and moved over to the more challenging but reliable fileds of reverse engineering and repurpousing the apparrently intentional features.

If only similar attention was directed to safety...

Re:Amateurs.

[Tophe]

It's not a bug, it's a FEATURE!

Re:Amateurs.

[gnick]

The divide-by-zero exception is hardly fair. How can he fix a bug that we can't even replicate? As soon as the LHC comes on-line, we can file an official bug report. Until then, let him off the hook.

Warning:

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA requires Flash.

The differences with having Flash in photos

[JoshDM]

"shooting two pictures with a digital camera -- one with flash and one without. "

This difference has already been well-expressed across the internet for years.

Oh, you make it sound so easy...

[GameboyRMH]

Unfortunately unlocking the minigame can be nearly impossible if you have the wrong arbitrarily-assigned game character. Of course you could modify your character and change your character's gear to make it a little easier, but that's even more work and expense and doesn't make a big difference. There's also a way to pay your way into one minigame session but you'll have to be discreet about it unless you want to start another minigame that involves a lot of not-fun stuff like carefully balancing a slippery bar of soap.