Robust Fitting on Poorly Sampled Data for Surface Light Field Rendering and Image Relighting

2D parametric color functions are widely used in Image-Based Rendering and Image Relighting. They make it possible to express the color of a point depending on a continuous directional parameter: the viewing or the incident light direction. Producing such functions from acquired data is promising but difficult. Indeed, an intensive acquisition process resulting in dense and uniform sampling is not always possible. Conversely, a simpler acquisition process results in sparse, scattered and noisy data on which parametric functions can hardly be fitted without introducing artifacts. Within this context, we present two contributions. The first one is a robust least-squares based method for fitting 2D parametric color functions on sparse and scattered data. Our method works for any amount and distribution of acquired data, as well as for any function expressed as a linear combination of basis functions. We tested our fitting for both image-based rendering (surface light fields) and image relighting using polynomials and spherical harmonics. The second one is a statistical analysis to measure the robustness of any fitting method. This measure assesses a trade-off between precision of the fitting and stability w.r.t. input sampling conditions. This analysis along with visual results confirm that our fitting method is robust and reduces reconstruction artifacts for poorly sampled data while preserving the precision for a dense and uniform sampling.