P3D Re: Converting 2D into Simulated 3D

[Brian Reynolds <reynolds@xxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Davis wrote:
> Or are you talking about some technique for taking a single photo from a 
> single vantage point and, using a computer and some image processing 
> software, generating a second image?  If that's the case, it's been done, 
> but I think it's unreliable and very labor intensive.  It generally 
> involves cutting portions of the image and shifting them slightly to the 
> right or left to create the parallax.
> 
> It might be possible to do this automatically at some point with a grab-bag 
> of techniques from artificial intelligence, image processing, etc.  A 
> computer which "recognizes" people and objects in a photo might be able to 
> reconstruct a model of those objects from its own database, and then create 
> a second image of that model from a slightly different view point.  I don't 
> think there's anything marketable yet that can do this.
> 

This has been possible for several years.  I saw a paper at SIGGRAPH a
while ago about reconstructing 3D computer models based on a single
photograph of a scene and some educated guesses about various
dimensions and knowledge of the optics used to take the photograph.  I
think they may have also used knowledge about the time of day and
shadow positions.  You can probably find the paper in the conferendce
proceedings from the mid-1990's.

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