A New Texture Mapping Algorithm for Photorealistic Reconstruction of 3d Objects

In the last decade, new developments in remote sensing, photogrammetry and laser scanning generated new possibilities for acquisition, processing and presentation of different objects at various scales. Beside object modelling, photorealistic texturing is still a challenging task. This paper focuses on a new texture mapping technique, which extends the known 2.5D approaches of texture mapping to 3D objects. A new algorithm will be described, suitable to achieve high quality results by eliminating problems of current approaches e.g. resolution dependency, need of huge amount of memory and handling of colour and brightness differences. A new, vector based visibility analysis, using vector algebra instead of pixel based algorithms will be presented. In the context of texture mapping, the fusion of different texture sources (different images) with different illumination and exposure conditions as well as images with different resolutions is an important task. To achieve best results in terms of homogeneity and level of detail, a multi-image texturing approach was developed, to preserve the fine texture information of the object. To adjust the brightness levels of the image dataset, a global and a local colour adjustment was developed. The software “Blender” was used to generate high quality images, movies and animations. The result of the investigations and developments is a software system to texture 3D models photorealistically and automatically. All algorithms are discussed in detail. The performance is demonstrated using artificial and real world data sets.