Internet Photos to 3D

University of Washington researchers have developed mind-blowing software technology that uses gathers thousands of internet photos of landmarks and then transforms them into 3D time-lapse scenes. “While previous work assumed a static camera, the addition of camera motion during the time-lapse creates a very compelling impression of parallax. Our results show photorealistic time-lapses of skylines and natural scenes over many years, with dramatic parallax effects,” said the team. Continue reading for another video and more information.

“We introduce an approach for synthesizing time-lapse videos of popular landmarks from large community photo collections. Theapproach is completely automated and leverages the vast quantity of photos available online. First, we cluster 86 million photos intolandmarks and popular viewpoints. Then, we sort the photos by date and warp each photo onto a common viewpoint. Finally, we stabilize the appearance of the sequence to compensate for lighting effects and minimize flicker. Our resulting time-lapses show diverse changes in the world’s most popular sites, like glaciers shrinking, skyscrapers being constructed, and waterfalls changing course,” according to Ricardo Martin Brualla.

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