Rendering of spherical light fields

A plenoptic function is a parameterized function describing the flow of light in space, and has served as a key idea in building some of the recent image-based rendering systems. This paper presents a new representation scheme, called a spherical light field, of the plenoptic function, that is based on spheres. While methods using spherical coordinates are thought to require substantially more computation than those using planar or cylindrical coordinates, we show that spheres can also be used efficiently in representing and resampling the flow of light. Our image-based rendering algorithm is different from the previous systems, the light field and lumigraph, in that it is an “object-space” algorithm that can be easily embedded into the traditional polygonal rendering system. Our method is easily accelerated by 3D graphics boards that support the primitive functionality, such as viewing and smooth shading. In addition, we introduce an encoding scheme based on wavelets for com...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: PG
• Authors: Insung Ihm, Sanghoon Park, Rae Kyoung Lee
• Keywords: Computer Graphics, Image-based Rendering, Light field, PG 1997, Spherical Light field