So why don't we all own 3D cameras? Aside from expense and size, there remain fundamental technical problems that restrict the current state of the art. One of these problems is modeling surface materials, such as skin, vegetation, wood, leather, or hair, that reflect light in interesting and complex ways and are therefore difficult to model. Another major limitation is that most techniques are restricted to static scenes. Obtaining detailed and complete models of moving scenes is challenging, due to the limited measurements that can be obtained at each time instant.
In this talk, I will give a brief overview of 3D Photography and the current state of the art. I will then describe new work from my research group that enables capturing scenes with complex and general reflectance properties, and capturing high-resolution 3D models of moving faces.