Thesis
Interactive Hand-held Light Field Capture
Abstract
Regular images and video often struggle to convey a compelling sense of shape and scale in photographed scenes. Light fields, which are created from large collections of images of a scene, offer a promising alternative by letting users interactively navigate a photographed environment as they would any other virtual space. However, collections of photos that result in high quality light fields are very difficult to capture without specialized hardware. As a result, light field authorship has traditionally been restricted to experts in Image Based Rendering (IBR). This thesis presents the design and implementation of an interactive system for capturing light fields that uses an off the shelf webcamera connected to a laptop computer. The system consists of a process for capture as well as a method for viewing captured light field data that is immediately available for review at any time during the system's use. This system makes it possible for users to create higher quality light fields in a fraction of the time taken by previous methods that do not rely on specialized hardware. This creates a compelling new way for a larger community of users to communicate by capturing and sharing interactive representations of their environment.
