Navigating through sparse views

This paper presents an image-based walkthrough technique where reference images are sparsely sampled along a path. The technique relies on a simple user interface for rapid modeling. Simple meshes are drawn to model and represent the underlying scene in each of the reference images. The meshes, consisting of only few polygons for each image are then registered by drawing a single line on each image, called model registration line, to form an aligned 3D model. To synthesize a novel view, two nearby reference images are mapped back onto their models by projective texture-mapping. Since the simple meshes are a crude approximation to the real model in the scene, image feature lines are drawn and used as aligning anchors to further register and blend two views together and form a final novel view. The simplicity of the technique yields rapid, "home-made"image-based walkthroughs. We have produced walkthroughs from a set of photographs to show the effectiveness of the technique.