Point-based neural rendering with neural point catacaustics for interactive free-viewpoint reflection flow
The visual quality of recent neural rendering techniques is exceptional when used for rendering scenes shot with free viewpoints. Such scenes frequently have significant view-dependent high-frequency effects, such as reflections from shiny objects, which can be modeled in one of two fundamentally different ways: using an Eulerian approach, where they take into account a fixed representation of reflections and model directionally. variation in appearance, or using a Lagrangian solution, where they follow the flow of reflections as the observer moves. Employing expensive volumetric rendering or mesh-based rendering, most of the above techniques adopt the former by encoding color at fixed points based on viewing location and direction.
Instead, their system uses a neural warp field to directly learn the flow of reflection as a function of perspective, effectively using a Lagrangian approach. Its point-based neural rendering technique makes interactive rendering possible, which naturally allows the neural field to double the reflection points. Because they often combine slow volumetric ray marches with view-dependent queries to render (relatively) high-frequency reflections, the above methods sometimes include an inherent trade-off between quality and performance. Fast zoom options compromise reflection sharpness and clarity while sacrificing angular resolution. In general, such techniques create mirrored geometry behind the reflector by modeling the view-dependent density and color parameterized by the viewing direction using a multilayer perceptron (MLP). When combined with volumetric ray marching, this often produces a “hazy” look, which loses precise clarity in reflections.
Even if a recent fix improves the effectiveness of such techniques, volumetric rendering still needs to be improved. Furthermore, the use of such techniques makes it difficult to alter scenes with reflections. The bias towards low frequencies in MLP-based implicit neural radiation fields that they avoid when using a point-based Lagrangian method endures even when other codings and parameterizations are used. His approach provides two additional benefits: since there are fewer costs during inference, interactive rendering is possible, and scene modification is simple thanks to direct rendering. They first extract a point cloud from a multi-view data set using typical 3D reconstruction techniques. After a quick manual step to build a reflective mask on three or four images, they optimize two separate point clouds with additional high-dimensional features.
The main point cloud, static throughout the render, represents the mostly diffuse scene component. In contrast, the second reflection point cloud, whose points are moved by the learned neural warp field, represents highly sight-dependent reflection effects. During training, the footprint and opacity characteristics carried by the dots are also adjusted for their position. The final image is created by rasterizing and interpreting the learned features of the two-point clouds using a neural renderer. They are inspired by the theoretical foundations of geometric optics of curved reflectors, which demonstrate how reflections from a curved object move over catacaustic surfaces, often producing fast-moving and erratic reflection fluxes.
They develop a flow field they call Neural Point Catacaustics by training it to learn these trajectories, allowing for point-of-view interactive neural rendering. Importantly, the clarity of its point-based representation makes it easy to manipulate scenes that contain reflections, such as modifying reflections or cloning reflective objects. Before presenting their method, they establish the geometric basis of the complicated reflection flux for curved reflectors. They then provide the following contributions:
• A novel direct scene representation for neural rendering that includes a main point cloud with optimized parameters to render the remaining scene content and a separate reflection point cloud that is displaced by a reflection neural warp field that it learns to compute. neural point catacaustics.
• A neural warp field that learns how perspective affects the displacement of reflected points. Regular training of your end-to-end method, including this field, requires careful parameterization and initialization, progressive movement, and point densification.
• They also feature a general interactive neural rendering algorithm that achieves high quality for the diffuse and view-dependent glow of a scene, enabling free point-of-view navigation in captured scenes and interactive rendering.
They use various captured scenes to illustrate their method and demonstrate its superiority over previous neural rendering techniques for reflections from curved objects in quantitative and qualitative terms. This method allows for quick rendering and manipulation of such scenes, such as editing reflections, cloning reflective objects, or finding reflection matches in input images.
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Aneesh Tickoo is a consulting intern at MarktechPost. She is currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Information Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bhilai. She spends most of her time working on projects aimed at harnessing the power of machine learning. Her research interest is image processing and she is passionate about creating solutions around her. She loves connecting with people and collaborating on interesting projects.