Interactive Relighting of Panoramas

Tien-Tsin Wong , Chi-Wing Fu and Pheng-Ann Heng ,
IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, Vol. 21, No. 2, March-April 2001, pp 32-41.

Abstract

Due to the simplicity and efficiency of panoramic image representation, it has been successfully applied to Internet applications to provide an immersive illusion within a real or synthetic environment. However, once a scene has been captured as image, the lighting condition can no longer be adjustable. As the illumination adjustment is one key capability in computer graphics, we describe in this article a panoramic image representation which allows us to incorporate the illumination information into the panorama. Scenes represented by this representation not just allow panning, tilting and zooming, but also allow interactive adjustment of lighting condition. An interactive panoramic viewer is developed to demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of the proposed representation.

Interactive Demo

Click here for downloading and installing the demo program.

Movies

The following movies demonstrate the result of re-lighting panorama with different types of light sources.
A movie showing the screen capture of the perspective display of an indoor panorama, attic. The image-based scene is re-lighted by a directional light source. (Size: 4.87MB)
The same attic scene re-lighted by a spotlight and a slide projector light source. (Size: 4.93MB)
This movie shows the screen capture of re-lighting a panorama which represents an outdoor environment. It mimics the natural illumination throughout the whole day. (4.59MB)

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Related Publications

  1. " Real-Time Relighting of Compressed Panoramas",
    T. T. Wong, S. H. Or and C. W. Fu,
    Graphics Programming Methods, Edited by J. Lander, Charles River Media, 2003, pp. 375-288.

  2. " The Plenoptic Illumination Function",
    T. T. Wong, C. W. Fu, P. A. Heng and C. S. Leung,
    IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Vol. 4, No. 3, September 2002, pp. 361-371.
    (This paper received the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia Prize Paper Award 2005.)

  3. " Image-based Rendering with Controllable Illumination",
    T. T. Wong, P. A. Heng, S. H. Or and W. Y. Ng,
    in Proceedings of the 8-th Eurographics Workshop on Rendering (Rendering Techniques'97), St. Etienne, France, June 1997, pp. 13-22.