Lighting-Up Geometry: Accurate 3D Modelling of Museum Artifacts with a Torch and a Camera

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of obtaining complete, very detailed reconstructions of shiny objects such as glazed ceramics. We present an algorithm which uses silhouettes of the object, as well as images obtained under changing illumination conditions. In contrast with previous photometric stereo techniques, ours is not limited to a single viewpoint but produces accurate reconstructions in full 3D. A number of images of the object are obtained from multiple viewpoints, under varying lighting conditions. Starting from the silhouettes, the algorithm recovers camera motion and constructs the object s visual hull. This is then used to recover the illumination and initialise a multi-view photometric stereo scheme to obtain a closed surface reconstruction. The algorithm has been implemented as a practical model acquisition system. Here, we present a number of complete reconstructions of challenging real objects.