Optimized Generation of Stereoscopic CGI Films by 3D Image Warping

Abstract

The generation of a stereoscopic animation film requires doubling the rendering times and hence the cost. In this paper, we address this problem and propose an automatic system for generating a stereo pair from a given image and its depth map. Although several solutions exist in the literature, the high standards of image quality required in the context of a professional animation studio forced us to develop specially crafted algorithms that avoid artefacts caused by occlusions, anti-aliasing filters, etc. This paper describes all the algorithms involved in our system and provides their GPU implementation. The proposed system has been tested with real-life working scenarios. Our experiments show that the second view of the stereoscopic pair can be computed with as little as 15% of the effort of the original image while guaranteeing a similar quality.

Thumbnail image of graphical abstract

The generation of a stereoscopic animation film requires doubling the rendering times and hence the cost. In this paper, we address this problem and propose an automatic system for generating a stereo pair from a given image and its depth map. Although several solutions exist in the literature, the high standards of image quality required in the context of a professional animation studio forced us to develop specially crafted algorithms that avoid artefacts caused by occlusions, anti-aliasing filters, etc.