Graphics and Archaeology: Interpreting the Past
Snowbird, Utah
20-23 May 2000
Presentation:
- Fiat Lux: Achieving Reality through Image-Based Modeling, Rendering, and Lighting
Presenters:
- Paul Debevec
Presentation Resources:
- http://www.debevec.org
- http://www-archfp.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/
- http://www.metacreations.com/canoma/
- http://www.cyra.com/
- http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/
- http://www.fiatlux.berkeley.edu
Summary:
Paul's presentation surveyed the development of his ideas starting in 1991 (the Chevette Project) to the animation Fiat Lux.
His interests were in reconstructing geometry, lighting, color, etc., directly from photographs. In 1991, he worked on a Chevette "fly-by" using 5 images projected onto the geometry of a car. This expanded in a project for Interval Corporation, where they worked to create a stereo-reconstruction of a forest in Banf. This achieved much of the realism without the necessary complexity.
His next project was Rouen Revisited, a collaboration with Golan Levin, for SIGGRAPH 96. In it, they photographed and reprojected Monet's work onto a model derived from synthetic views of the cathedral in three different contexts - 1896 postcards, 1996 photographs, and Monet's original paintings.
A parallel development was the modeler FACADE at SIGGRAPH 96, a photogrammetic modeler that could be used to intelligently reconstruction data by minimizing the errors of estimation reconstructions from multiple views of an object. It also included work in view-dependent texture mapping.
In 1997, work on "The Campanile Movie" was undertaken. It included the gathering of aerial imagery via a kite-based camera system. (Chris Benton: Kite Aerial Photography) The data was used in a reconstruction of both the Berkeley Campanile tower and 40 buildings of the Berkeley campus from multiple views. An environment with a dome for sky was created such that the whole dataset could be rendered and imaged in realtime on an SGI system.
The Campanile Movie's reconstruction and rendering techniques were subsequently used by MANEX entertainment to create the virtual backgrounds for the "bullet time" shots in the movie "The Matrix".
Paul mentioned that a commercial product based upon some of this work was released by MetaCreations (Canoma). He also mentioned experimentation of "time-of-flight" laser scanning using a Cyrax laser scanner from Cyra Corp.
Finally, Paul took us through the development and completion of the film, "Fiat Lux" (which is from Genesis and the motto of UC Berkeley). The completed work took 8 weeks to complete the juried piece for SIGGRAPH 99. The story is inspired from Galileo's conflict with the Church. Imagery includes monoliths from Kubrick's 2001 and inspired work of Salvador Dali's "The Crucifixion".
The basic imagery is from St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. Obtaining special permission to photograph the interior, Paul and his collaborators were able to create an image-based rendering with the software package "Radiance" creating a dynamic range of rendering quite beyond many conventional renderings. The Vatican has seen this work and invited him back for other projects.
Conclusions / Issues:
- An interesting issue about ownership as raised in Marc Levoy's presentation - what if the reconstruction takes place from imagery or likenesses which have expired copyrights? Would the derived work still be under current jurisdiction? Especially if the original object did not exist in that form any more?
- Ruth commented that Paul's film, "Fiat Lux" perfectly expresses what she is trying to interpret in her archaeological interpretations - "this is a wonderful medium"