Floating Textures

Abstract

We present a novel multi-view, projective texture mapping technique. While previous multi-view texturing approaches lead to blurring and ghosting artefacts if 3D geometry and/or camera calibration are imprecise, we propose a texturing algorithm that warps (``floats'') projected textures during run-time to preserve crisp, detailed texture appearance. Our GPU implementation achieves interactive to real-time frame rates. The method is very generally applicable and can be used in combination with many image-based rendering methods or projective texturing applications. By using Floating Textures in conjunction with, e.g., visual hull rendering, light field rendering, or free-viewpoint video, improved rendering results are obtained from fewer input images, less accurately calibrated cameras, and coarser 3D geometry proxies. In a nutshell, the notion of Floating Textures is to correct for local texture misalignments by determining the optical flow between projected textures and warping the textures accordingly in the rendered image domain. Both steps, optical flow estimation and multi-texture warping, can be efficiently implemented on graphics hardware to achieve interactive to real-time performance.