WALK-THROUGH VIEW FOR FTV WITH CIRCULAR CAMERA SETUP

In this paper, we propose a method to generate a free viewpoint image using multi-viewpoint images which are taken by cameras arranged circularly. In past times, we have proposed the method to generate a free viewpoint image based on Ray-Space method. However, with that method, we can not generate a walk-through view seen from a virtual viewpoint among objects. The method we propose in this paper realizes the generation of such view. Our method gets information of the positions of objects using shape from silhouette method at first, and selects appropriate cameras which acquired rays needed for generating a virtual image. A free viewpoint image can be generated by collecting rays which pass over the focal point of a virtual camera. However, when the requested ray is not available, it is necessary to interpolate it from neighboring rays. Therefore, we estimate the depth of the objects from a virtual camera and interpolate ray information to generate the image. In the experiments with the virtual sequences which were captured at every 6 degrees, we set the virtual camera at user's choice and generated the image from that viewpoint successfully.