Interactive rapid part-based three-dimensional modeling from a single image and its applications

Commercially available 3D modeling software are often designed for professional artists and engineers. In this thesis, we present a novel image-based modeling framework to rapidly create 3D models from a single un-calibrated photograph taken by an ordinary camera. Our target user is novice computer users, thus a strictly 2D user interface (rather than a 3D interface similar to Maya) is chosen. However, given a 2D vector in the image, there are infinitely many 3D vectors with the same 2D projection. Our modeler combines 2D user mouse drags with the example model to create unique part-based 3D modifications. In our framework, 3D models are created by modifying a part-based example model of the object class. Furthermore, our part-based modification algorithm automatically distributes the user inputs to the whole model. Our smart-copy texture synthesis algorithm automatically creates a complete texture map of the 3D model. This texture synthesis creates seamless textures by combining the image with the 3D model properties such as visibility, symmetry and distance to camera. Many common objects such as buildings, furniture and vehicles are modeled by our technique in mere minutes.;In this thesis, two extensions to our modeler are presented: model-driven video-based rendering (ModVBR) and semi-automatic vehicle modeling. ModVBR is able to create novel photo-realistic renderings of a dynamic scene from a single video stream. Availability of a 3D model simplifies tracking, pose estimation and addition of post-effects such as shadows. Our interactive modeler often requires tens of inputs from the user which can be entered in couple minutes. Semi-automatic vehicle modeling, on the other hand, requires only a couple of user inputs and is performed in tens of seconds. A learning-based part detector is fused with our rapid part-based modeler to semi-automatically create 3D models of vehicles from a single side-view image.