Static Scene Illumination Estimation from Video with Applications

We present a system that automatically recovers scene geometry and illumination from a video, providing a basis for various applications. Previous image based illumination estimation methods either require user interaction or external information in the form of a database. We adopt structure-from-motion and multi-view stereo for initial scene reconstruction, and then estimate an environment map represented by spherical harmonics (as these perform better than other bases). We also demonstrate several video editing applications that exploit the recovered geometry and illumination, including object insertion (e.g. for augmented reality), shadow detection, and video relighting.