Schematic surface reconstruction

Abstract

This paper introduces a schematic representation for architectural scenes together with robust algorithms for reconstruction from sparse 3D point cloud data. The schematic models architecture as a network of transport curves, approximating a floorplan, with associated profile curves, together comprising an interconnected set of swept surfaces. The representation is extremely concise, composed of a handful of planar curves, and easily interpretable by humans. The approach also provides a principled mechanism for interpolating a dense surface, and enables filling in holes in the data, by means of a pipeline that employs a global optimization over all parameters. By incorporating a displacement map on top of the schematic surface, it is possible to recover fine details. Experiments show the ability to reconstruct extremely clean and simple models from sparse structure-from-motion point clouds of complex architectural scenes.