High Quality Shape from a Single RGB-D Image under Uncalibrated Natural Illumination

Abstract

We present a novel framework to estimate detailed shape of diffuse objects with uniform albedo from a single RGB-D image. To estimate accurate lighting in natural illumination environment, we introduce a general lighting model consisting of two components: global and local models. The global lighting model is estimated from the RGB-D input using the low-dimensional characteristic of a diffuse reflectance model. The local lighting model represents spatially varying illumination and it is estimated by using the smoothly-varying characteristic of illumination. With both the global and local lighting model, we can estimate complex lighting variations in uncontrolled natural illumination conditions accurately. For high quality shape capture, a shape-from-shading approach is applied with the estimated lighting model. Since the entire process is done with a single RGB-D input, our method is capable of capturing the high quality shape details of a dynamic object under natural illumination. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our method that dramatically improves shape details of the rough depth input.