초록 ▼

An improved apparatus and method for creating high quality virtual reality panoramas is disclosed that yields dramatic improvements during the authoring and projecting cycles, with speeds up to several orders of magnitude faster than prior systems. In a preferred embodiment, a series of rectilinear

An improved apparatus and method for creating high quality virtual reality panoramas is disclosed that yields dramatic improvements during the authoring and projecting cycles, with speeds up to several orders of magnitude faster than prior systems. In a preferred embodiment, a series of rectilinear images taken from a plurality of rows are pairwise registered with one another, and locally optimized using a pairwise objective function (local error function) that minimizes certain parameters in a projective transformation, using an improved iterative procedure. The local error function values for the pairwise registrations are then saved and used to construct a quadratic surface to approximate a global optimization function (global error function). The chain rule is used to avoid the direct evaluation of the global objective function, saving computation. In one embodiment concerning the blending aspect of the present invention, an improved procedure is described that relies on Laplacian and Gaussian pyramids, using a blend mask whose boundaries are determined by the grassfire transform. An improved iterative procedure is disclosed for the blending that also determines at what level of the pyramid to perform blending, and results in low frequency image components being blended over a wider region and high frequency components being blended over a narrower region. Human interaction and input is also provided to allow manual projective registration, initial calibration and feedback in the selection of photos and convergence of the system.

대표청구항 ▼

1. In a computer having a processor which executes instructions stored in memory, a method for generating panoramas from two dimensional images, comprising the steps of:storing at least two rectilinear images in a computer memory; blending said rectilinear images to create a panorama; said blending

1. In a computer having a processor which executes instructions stored in memory, a method for generating panoramas from two dimensional images, comprising the steps of:storing at least two rectilinear images in a computer memory; blending said rectilinear images to create a panorama; said blending of said rectilinear images to create a panorama comprising the steps of: (a) constructing a Laplacian pyramid for the overlapping images in an image overlap region where said images overlap, said Laplacian pyramids having a plurality of levels; (b) determining the coarsest level resolution level of the Laplacian pyramids for each of said images; (c) constructing a blend mask from the image overlap region for said plurality of overlapping images, said blend mask being a Gaussian pyramid; and (d) combining said Laplacian pyramid and said Gaussian pyramids to blend said images in said image overlap region.