3D surface texture synthesis using improved graph cuts

This paper introduces an improved graph cut. approach and combines it with commonly used surface texture representations for synthesis. Unlike graph cut which supports iterative refinement for improvement of the patch seams, the improved graph cut method re-synthesis the max error overlap region using k-nearest neighbor method. This paper follows a simple 3D surface texture synthesis framework, which comprises three steps: capture, synthesis and relighting. Firstly, it represents 3D surface textures under varied illumination directions using gradient and albedo maps. Then, it uses the surface representation to synthesis a description of a larger surface. Finally, it renders the surface representation. It proposes an improved graph cut method for the synthesis step, and the proposed method can generate perceptually smooth images of 3D surface texture from small samples.