Image-based relighting as the sampling and reconstruction of the plenoptic illumination function

Image-based modeling and rendering has been demonstrated as a cost-effective and efficient approach to real-time graphics systems. In this paper, we describe an extended formulation of the plenoptic function, called the plenoptic illumination function, which explicitly specifies the illumination component. Techniques based on it can be extended to support relighting as well as view interpolation. Based on the linearity of illumination, image-based relighting can be performed with complex lighting configuration. The core of this framework is compression, and we therefore show how to exploit two types of data correlation, intra-pixel and inter-pixel correlations, in order to achieve a manageable storage size.