Acquisition and Rendering of Optically Complex Objects and Phenomena

Specular and refractive objects pose challenges to range scanning because their surface cannot be observed directly. Translucent objects exhibit significant effects of global light transport, while volumetric phenomena like fire, smoke, and plasma effects do not have a proper surface.

Our research has led to the development of feasible and surprisingly accurate acquisition approaches for these difficult types of objects. This talk will cover tomographic multi-view approaches for capturing dynamic natural phenomena like fire, water, smoke, and refractive index distributions in heated gas flows.
In the second part of my talk I will present a reconstruction approach based on dual laser range scanning, as well as a technique for the direct volumetric measurement of glass objects, and show results for static objects made of optically challenging materials.

Finally, I will discuss real-time rendering techniques suitable for realistic display of the acquired object descriptions and outline future research directions.