Geotensity: Combining motion and lighting for 3D surface reconstruction

This paper is about automatically reconstructing the full 3D surface of an object observed in motion by a single static camera. Based on the two paradigms, structure from motion and linear intensity subspaces, we introduce the geotensity constraint that governs the relationship between four or more images of a moving object. We show that it is possible in theory to solve for 3D Lambertian surface structure for the case of a single point light source and propose that a solution exists for an arbitrary number point light sources. The surface may or may not be textured. We then give an example of automatic surface reconstruction of a face under a point light source using arbitrary unknown object motion and a single fixed camera.