Mi-Suen Lee

New View Generation with a Bi-centric Camera

We propose a novel method for new view generation from a rectified sequence of images. Our new images correspond to a new camera model, which we call a bi-centric camera; in this model the centers of horizontal and vertical projections lie in different locations on the cameras optical axis. This model reduces to the regular pinhole camera when the two projection centers coincide, and the pushbroom camera when one projection center lies at infinity. We first analyze the properties of this camera model. We then show how to generate new bi-centric views from vertical cuts in the epipolar volume of a rectified sequence. Every vertical cut generates a new bi-centric view, where the specific parameters of the cut determine the location of the projection centers. We discuss and demonstrate applications, including the generation of images where the virtual camera lies behind occluding surfaces (e.g., behind the back wall of a room), and in unreachable positions (e.g., in front of a glass window). Our final application is the generation of movies taken by a simulated forward moving camera, using as input a movie taken by a sideways moving camera.