Here’s an oldie-but-goodie from 2004: Kar-Han Tan, James Kobler, Rogerio S. Feris, Paul Dietz, and Ramesh Raskar, then of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL), produced a custom digital camera and software that derives line drawings of a scene, or an object, by analyzing the shadows in four otherwise-identical pictures that are illuminated from different quadrants. The MERL has a technical report from 2005 describing potential medical applications of the technology, and photo.net has a good general overview of the process. Raskar has since gone on to the MIT media lab (so you know he’s doing something right), and his page there includes more up-to-date work on the technology.
Thanks to Jon Wolfe for bringing this to my attention.
8 thoughts on “Multi-flash camera makes automatic line drawings”
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If they colored each strobe they could etract normal map information and get geometry!
You sound like you know what you’re talking about, but I gotta admit I don’t follow. Can you explain/link an explanation? For other readers as well as myself. Meanwhile, you oughta check out Raskar’s web page at MIT and see if he’s already trying to do something like that. If he isn’t, you should e-mail and ask about it, or better yet, if you’re the grad school type, see if he’ll pay you to come to Cambridge and make it work! :)
I wonder if you could do this with landscapes by taking pictures at different times of day.
Outstanding idea. I bet you could.