
Volume.gl – 3D Model from Single Image - nicd
https://volume.gl
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VikingCoder
Shitty 3D is worse than 2D.

Source: I worked really hard to make 3D less shitty, and we failed at it, and
went out of business.

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dang
That sounds interesting. What did you do and why do you think it failed?

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VikingCoder
We turned a bunch of 2D images into 3D models, for viewing online. Back in
2000.

It partially failed due to the dot com collapse sucking all the oxygen out of
the room.

It also failed because the technology wasn't good enough, and the resulting 3D
was, frankly, pretty shitty.

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rubidium
Photogrammetry seems to have advanced since then. Would you agree?

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VikingCoder
Yes.

But as impressive as creating this from a single image may be, the people
viewing it won't care - the output is uselessly bad.

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Jyaif
Needs quite a bit of improvement. With the current quality, I don't see any
possible application.

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thecatspaw
I agree. I am sure it would be pretty helpfull for models in the background
though, which dont need to be perfect, just an approximation is usually
enough. At the least its gonna look better than a billboarded image

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Zofren
If the application is gaming, I feel that if a prop is far enough away that
this quality of model is acceptable, then you're better off just using a flat
texture for efficiency. These generated 3D models aren't necessarily low-poly,
despite being somewhat janky.

While I can't personally see much application for this in its current form,
the technology is really impressive nonetheless. I'm very interested in seeing
how far this can go.

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bhouston
It seems sort of unnecessary to do it from a single image. Just get a little
motion of the camera (just a second) and you can get way better estimates for
depth.

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paulhilbert
Having seen the state-of-the-art in action
([https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00730](https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00730)) I find
the results pretty disappointing. Is there anything I miss?

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bhouston
This does seem pretty poor, I've never seen any results that were impressive
from it, but in its defense any published results tend to pick images that
work well.

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pmx
This was a gear deal more impressive than I expected! I tried a couple of
images and it got the depth very close on one and almost perfect on the other.
It's weird to be able to change the perspective of an image of a place I know
and it be as accurate as it is! Kudos.

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white-flame
I thought uploading classic POV-Ray renders would be easy fodder for it, with
no noise, "perfect" lighting, simple shapes, and smooth surfaces. But it was
pretty much garble for the heightfield.

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random4369
They probably didn't train it on 3d renders. Training it on 3d renders would
likely hurt its ability to handle real photos.

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blain
Uploading my own images seems to be broken in Firefox 58.0.2.

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pantalaimon
It doesn't seem to work in Chrome either.

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gpmcadam
CORS Preflight errors in the console in Chrome

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dgarceran
wow [https://github.com/Volume-GL/Pulp-Fiction-
ARKit](https://github.com/Volume-GL/Pulp-Fiction-ARKit)

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splittingTimes
Reminds me on disneys research, where you take a single picture of your smile
and get a full blown 3D teeth reconstruction.

[https://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/model-based-
teeth...](https://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/model-based-teeth-
reconstruction/)

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Tepix
Once tech advances a bit further and we can quickly generate good 3d
environments from movies, we will have so many great worlds to experience in
VR - it will be amazing.

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vidarh
I think the first thing that will reveal is just how much detail is simply not
there, or is inconsistent. E.g. consider the contortions that people often
have to go through to make models of TV series sets fit the available facts
because the series have not needed to pay perfect attention to room placement.
Or how many rooms, or streets will simply be missing, or even walls of rooms
because things are only ever shown from one angle.

It may make it easier to generate such environments, but it'll still require a
huge amount of extrapolation.

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gonogo
Is there any library like this that can increase reconstruction accuracy with
multiple cameras?

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nailer
That's structure-through-motion and it's an older tech.

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swagasaurus-rex
Incredible. I sincerely believe advances in computer vision will be dependent
on creating a 3d 'mental model' of imagery/video.

What happens when you give it images that fool people? For example the
infamous Escher drawings.

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moondev
[https://airtightinteractive.com/demos/js/ruttetra/](https://airtightinteractive.com/demos/js/ruttetra/)

