A Fast Algorithm for Topologically Generating Visual Hull
一种可视外壳的快速拓扑生成算法

The traditional volumetric visual hull generating methods were not applicable to huge-volume objects due to redundant calculations. Other methods based on ray intersections were sensitive to input perturbations and were hence lack of robustness. A fast new algorithm was represented in this paper for reconstructing an object's visual hull from its silhouette. The topological structure of the object's surface was taken into consideration, and the surface mesh was reconstructed directly without having to compute the redundant information of all the voxels inside. Then, an improved SurfaceNet algorithm was adopted to smooth the 3d surface. The robustness of the classical volume carving method was reserved, while the time complexity was reduced to only linearly depend on the number of vertices on the final surface. The dependence of the time complexity on the number of photos was reduced as well. The results of the experiments show that this topological generation algorithm is superior to some classical visual hull methods, as far as its reconstruction function for practicality is concerned.