We
present a new method for reconstructing the exterior surface of a
complex transparent scene with inhomogeneous interior (e.g., multiple
interfaces, reflective or painted interiors, etc). Our approach
involves capturing images of the scene from one or more viewpoints
while moving a proximal light source to a 2D or 3D set of positions.
This gives a 2D (or 3D) dataset per pixel, called the scatter trace.
The key idea of our approach is that even though light transport within
a transparent scene’s interior can be exceedingly complex, the scatter
trace of each pixel has a highlyconstrained geometry that (1) reveals
the contribution of direct surface reflection, and (2) leads to a
simple “scatter-trace stereo” algorithm for computing the local
geometry of the exterior surface (depth and surface normals). We
present 3D reconstruction results for a variety of scenes that exhibit
complex light transport phenomena.
