Layered textures for image-based rendering

An extension to texture mapping is given in this paper for improving the efficiency of image-based rendering. For a depth image with an orthogonal displacement at each pixel, it is decomposed by the displacement into a series of layered textures (LTs) with each one having the same displacement for all its texels. Meanwhile, some texels of the layered textures are interpolated for obtaining a continuous 3D approximation of the model represented in the depth image. Thus, the plane-to-plane texture mapping can be used to map these layered textures to produce novel views and the advantages can be obtained as follows: accelerating the rendering speed, supporting the 3D surface details and view motion parallax, and avoiding the expensive task of hole-filling in the rendering stage. Experimental results show the new method can produce high-quality images and run faster than many famous image-based rendering techniques.