Globally Consistent Space-Time Reconstruction

Abstract

Most objects deform gradually over time, without abrupt changes in geometry or topology, such as changes in genus. Correct space-time reconstruction of such objects should satisfy this gradual change prior. This requirement necessitates a globally consistent interpretation of spatial adjacency. Consider the capture of a surface that comes in contact with itself during the deformation process, such as a hand with different fingers touching one another in parts of the sequence. Naive reconstruction would glue the contact regions together for the duration of each contact and keep them apart in other parts of the sequence. However such reconstruction violates the gradual change prior as it enforces a drastic intrinsic change in the object's geometry at the transition between the glued and unglued sub-sequences. Instead consistent global reconstruction should keep the surfaces separate throughout the entire sequence. We introduce a new method for globally consistent space-time geometry and motion reconstruction from video capture. We use the gradual change prior to resolve inconsistencies and faithfully reconstruct the geometry and motion of the scanned objects. In contrast to most previous methods our algorithm doesn't require a strong shape prior such as a template and provides better results than other template-free approaches.