Modeling the world: the virtualization pipeline

High quality, virtual 3D models are quickly emerging as a new multimedia data type with applications in such diverse areas as e-commerce, online encyclopaedias, or virtual museums, to name just a few. The paper presents new algorithms and techniques for the acquisition and real-time interaction with complex textured 3D objects and shows how these results can be seamlessly integrated with previous work into a single framework for the acquisition, processing, and interactive display of high quality 3D models. In addition to pure geometry, such algorithms also have to take into account the texture of an object (which is crucial for a realistic appearance) and its reflectance behavior. The measurement of accurate material properties is an important step towards photorealistic rendering, where both the general surface properties as well as the spatially varying effects of the object are needed. Recent work on the image-based reconstruction of spatially varying BRDFs (bidirectional reflectance distribution function) enables the generation of high quality models of real objects from a sparse set of input data. Efficient use of the capabilities of advanced PC graphics hardware allows for interactive rendering under arbitrary viewing and lighting conditions and realistically reproduces the appearance of the original object.