Novel methods for manipulating and combining light fields

Image-based modeling is a family of techniques that uses images, rather than 3D geometric models, to represent a scene. A light field is a common image-based model used for rendering the appearance of objects with a high-degree of realism. Light fields are used in a variety of applications. For example, they are used to capture the appearance of real-world objects with complex geometry, like human bodies, furry teddy bears, or bonsai trees. They are also used to represent intricate distributions of light, like the illumination from a flash light. However, despite the increasing popularity of using light fields, sufficient tools do not exist for editing and manipulating them. A second limitation is that those tools that have been developed have not been integrated into toolkits, making it difficult to combine light fields. This dissertation presents two contributions towards light field manipulation. The first is an interactive tool for deformation of a light field. Animators could use this tool to deform the shape of captured objects. The second contribution is a system, called LightShop, for manipulating and combining light fields. Operations such as deforming, compositing, and focusing within light fields can be combined together in a single system. Such operations are specified independent of how that light field is captured or parameterized, allowing a user to simultaneously manipulate and combine multiple light fields of varying parameterizations. This dissertation first demonstrates light field deformation for animating captured objects. Then, LightShop is demonstrated in three applications: (1) animating captured objects in a composite scene containing multiple light fields, (2) focusing on multiple depths in an image, for emphasizing different layers in sports photography and (3) integrating captured objects into interactive games.