Speed-optimized free-viewpoint rendering based on depth layering

In this paper free-viewpoint rendering is addressed and a new fast approach for virtual views synthesis from view-plus-depth 3D representation is proposed. Depth layering in disparity domain is employed in order to optimally approximate the scene geometry by a set of constant depth layers. This approximation facilitates the use of connectivity information for segment-based forward warping of the reference layer map, producing a complete virtual view layer map containing no cracks or holes. The warped layer map is used to guide the disocclusions inpainting process of the synthesized texture map. For this purpose, a speed-optimized patch-based inpainting approach is proposed. In contrast to the existing methods, patch similarity function is based on local binary patterns descriptors. Such binary representation allows for efficient processing and comparison of patches, as well as compact storage and reuse of previously calculated binary descriptors. The experimental results demonstrate realtime capability of the proposed method even for CPU-based implementation, while the quality is comparable with other view synthesis approaches.