3D modeling for communications

The media and communications providers share an increasing interest in 3D models of people, objects, and scenes. The paper focuses on features that 3D acquisition systems ought to have in order to optimally serve these markets, where emphasis is on realistic visualisation. It is argued that 3D acquisition techniques developed for traditional applications such as visual inspection aren't necessarily the best option. Techniques should be developed that are dedicated to visualisation-specific requirements. This is exemplified with two systems that have been developed recently. One takes uncalibrated video data as input from which it generates a 3D model. A second system projects a grid of lines and gets dense 3D from a single image. This system needs some calibration, but the corresponding procedure is extremely simple. It can also be used to capture detailed, 3D scene dynamics.