BulletTime photography with 3D reconstruction

• Main Author: Song, Wei Tyan
• Other Authors: Chia Liang Tien, Clement
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Computer science and engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/166035
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

BulletTime photography is a unique and complex photographic effect that presents a moment where the scene or object in focus appears to be frozen in time and that it can be viewed from multiple angles. This photographic effect have been rising in popularity ever since its application in the movie known as ‘The Matrix’ and have extended its applications to a variety of fields including sports, advertising and medical. Recreating the BulletTime effect typically requires a heavy hardware set-up with large number of cameras and a highly sophisticated commercial software for synchronization and visual effects, both of which may be extremely costly and not accessible to an average photography hobbyist. Fortunately, through advancements in technology over the last decade, attempts at studying BulletTime photography techniques to recreate it using low cost hardware set-up have been very successful. One of such previous studies was the use of Raspberry Pi embedded cameras. In this project, the study of ‘low-cost’ BulletTime photography is extended to find alternatives for commercial visual effects software. To achieve this, exploration into the world of 3D reconstruction and multi-view photography have been conducted and the results proved viability and potential. Furthermore, this project involves developing a prototype of an integrated application that consists of multiple open-sourced software and libraries to support the digital creation of the BulletTime effect. This project will also leverage on the ‘low-cost’ hardware set-up achieved in the previous study, which together with the prototype application, will provide a complete BulletTime photography alternative that may be more accessible to an average hobbyist.