TOWARDS FREE-VIEWPOINT VIDEO CAPTURE IN CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENTS FOR COLLABORATIVE & IMMERSIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract

The ability to capture and explore complex real-world dynamic scenes is crucial for their detailed analysis. Tools which allow retrospective exploration of such scenes may support training of new employees or be used to evaluate industrial processes. In our work, we share insights and practical details for end-to-end acquisition of Free-Viewpoint Videos (FVV) in challenging environments and their potential for exploration in collaborative immersive virtual environments. Our lightweight capturing approach makes use of commodity DSLR cameras and focuses on improving both density and accuracy of Structure-from-Motion (SfM) reconstructions from small sets of images under difficult conditions. The integration of captured 3D models over time into a compact representation allows for efficient visualization of detailed FVVs in an immersive multi-user virtual reality system. We demonstrate our workflow on a representative acquisition of a suction excavation process and outline a use-case for exploration and interaction between collocated users and the FVV in a collaborative virtual environment.