Budha, the Cat and the rock
Saurabh Mahajan - CSE 576 Project 3 Artifact Page
Discussion:Overall, the project was pretty straightforward and my results match well with the solution executable's results. The results produced by this method are very impressive, considering they are based entirely on a couple key equations and a few least-square fittings. Most of the sample images reconstructed nicely using this method. e.g. there are a lot of details visible in the rock's reconstruction. The most noticeable mistakes made by the method occurred for shadowing and specular highlights. e.g.in the owl's reconstruction. The chipped paint on the eye of the owl creates some false points in the 3D reconstruction (it appears as a sharp needle). Another example is the fact that the cat's and the owl's belly appears pointed. The other problem with this method is the noisy edges where there is no information or the surface is parallel to the camera angle (this is most apparent in the horse's reconstruction).
I implemented two of the whistles. The first being a more sophisticated weighting function for normal and albedo calculation. To illustrate the difference this made, below are pictures of the cat; the original photographs appear to the left, while new screen shots taken with the modified program appear to the right.
It's hard to tell, but there are subtle differences between the two images. Since normals at points with lightly colored pixels are weighted less heavily, the end result is that these points are less emphasized in the new map. The opposite is true for the new albedo map (below right). This can be seen especially in the cat's right eye, which appears much brighter in the new image.
I also modified the objective function for surface reconstruction. For dark pixels where the normal estimate is bad I weigh the constraints less heavily than at bright pixels where the estimate is good. All the artifacts below were created with this modified algorithm
Artifacts
I chose to take snapshots of Budha, the Cat and the rock.
The Budha
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