| This thesis describes methods that generate a digital three-dimensional (3D) model of a visual scene's surfaces, using a set of calibrated photographs taken of the scene. The 3D model is then rendered to produce views of the scene from new viewpoints. In the literature, this is known as 3D scene reconstruction for new view synthesis. This thesis introduces novel approaches that improve upon the quality, efficiency, and applicability of existing methods.; To achieve a high quality reconstruction, it is essential to know which cameras have visibility of local areas on the surface. Accordingly, we present a related pair of techniques for computing visibility during a volumetric reconstruction. We then describe post-processing methods that refine surface reconstructions to improve model fidelity.; We explore different representations for modeling the 3D surface during reconstruction. We introduce a method of warping the 3D space to represent large-scale scenes. We also investigate a level set approach, which embeds the 3D surface as the zero level set of volumetrically sampled function. Finally, we present a view-dependent representation that can be computed at interactive rates. |
