Driven by consumer-market applications that enjoy steadily increasing economic importance, graphics hardware and rendering algorithms are a central focus of computer graphics research. Video-based rendering is an approach that aims to overcome the current bottleneck in the time-consuming modeling process and has applications in areas such as computer games, special effects, and interactive TV. This book offers an in-depth introduction to video-based rendering, a rapidly developing new interdisciplinary topic employing techniques from computer graphics, computer vision, and telecommunication engineering. Providing an overview of the state-of-the-art of video-based rendering and details of the fundamental VBR algorithms, the author discusses the advantages, the potential, as well as the limitations of the approach in the context of different application scenarios.

"VBR technology poses important scientific questions and technological challenges; breakthroughs could put one company ahead of another in the realms of interactive television, 3D TV, and free-point video." -SciTech Book News, December 2005

Marcus A. Magnor