Why HDR is Important for 3DTV Model Acquisition

Mechanisms for automatically acquiring high quality 3D content of both indoor and outdoor scenes are essential research topics within 3D Television (3DTV). The envisioned goal is that a photo-realistic 3D real-time rendering from the actual and potentially arbitrary viewpoint of the beholder who is watching 3DTV becomes possible. Such scenes include movie sets in studios, e.g., for talk shows, TV series and blockbuster movies, but also outdoor scenes, e.g., buildings in a neighborhood for a car chase or cultural heritage sites for a documentary. The goal of 3D model acquisition is to provide the 3D background models where potential 3D actors can be embedded. Although model acquisition platforms have become available, the dynamic range of the used cameras is too limited to fully cover real world environments. We present two multi-sensor systems for 3D model acquisition, demonstrate the need for high dynamic range (HDR) capable acquisition platforms and propose a system that performs HDR computation to produce 3D models with tone mapped HDR information. Combining depth and HDR color information, a Markov Random Field based technique is used to get best out of both worlds - the high spatial resolution of the tonemapped HDR image with the depth field of a time-of-fiight camera.