A Fast Surface-Based Visual Hull Reconstruction

In this paper, we describe a new method for shape reconstruction from a set of silhouette images. We propose a method for traversing the depth layers of the projected viewing cones from all viewpoints based on the principle of the Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG). Taking advantage of the modern Graphics Processing Units (GPU), the proposed CSG-like method achieves a fast full reconstruction of VH, rather than rendering a looking of the VH from a virtual viewpoint, in an interactive frame rate. For each viewpoint, the viewing edges are computed separately in a parallel manner. Subsequently, the edges are merged together to generate the final surface-based Visual Hull (VH). The method was tested on several datasets including real data and the results will be presented in this paper.