Traditionally, people has accepted the contents produced by contents providers.
They read newspapers, listen to radio programs, or watch TV everyday.
However, people do not remain as contents consumers anymore nowadays.
Instead of being a passive consumer, each of them becomes an active
producer of multimedia contents. People not only create multimedia contents,
such as pictures, movie clips, and flash animations,
but also share theirs with others on the Internet (e.g. Blogs, Google video).
In this research, we develop VR@Home, an immersive contents creation platform,
and core technologies for it. Users can create 3D contents and merge 3D contents
in virtual space with intuitive interaction. Even users can get into the virtual space
and interact with virtual contents. All of these features are enabled by core technologies,
such as:
- Image-based modeling: For 3D contents creation, we provide an image-based modeling module.
First, the motion of camera is retrieved from the image sequences captured by a camera.
Then, 3D mesh is optimized with the constraints of smoothness, silhouette, and texture.
Potential applications of VR@Home platform is interactive education
in remote site, digital entertainment, such as video games, and remote collaboration.
- Real-time user segmentation: We segment a user from a complex natural background in real-time
to substitute the role of blue screen. After subtracting a user based on background learning,
the exact contour of the user is extracted to remove noises on the boundary of the segmented image.
- Light source estimation: The lighting condition of the real world is estimated from images of
mirrored-ball. We estimate only a few light sources dominating the lighting condition of the
real scene. The estimation results are used as virtual light sources for realistic rendering.
- Real-time smooth shadowing: For realism, we generate smooth shadows on complex surfaces by
using shadow maps and shadow volumes. High-quality rendering is achieved in real-time with
recent programmable graphics hardwares.
Demo Video Clip
Publications
-
W. Lee, C.R. Babu, J.Lee, W. Woo,
"VR@Home: An Immersive Contents Creation System for 3D User-Generated Contents,"
The 2nd International Conference of E-Learning and Games (Edutainment2007),
pp. 81-91, 2007.
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