Texture map construction method and apparatus for displaying panoramic image mosaics

摘要

The texture map construction method and apparatus of the invention constructs, from a set of overlapping images, a texture map divisible into plural faces. This is accomplished for each one of the plural faces by computing a texture mapping transform which maps between pixel locations in the texture map and a three-dimensional coordinate system. For each image of the set, an image transform is computed which maps between pixel locations in the image and the three-dimensional coordinate system. For each image of the set, the texture mapping transform and the image transform are combined to produce a texture map- to-image space transform mapping between pixel locations in the image and pixel locations in the texture map. For each one of the pixel locations in the one face of the texture map, the system computes from the texture map-to- image space transform a pixel value of a pixel location in the image corresponding to the one pixel location in the one face of the texture map. This produces a set of image pixel values from the set of overlapping images for the one pixel location in the texture space. Finally, the set of image pixel values are blended to produce a composite pixel value for the one pixel location in the one face of the texture map.