Models: The Graphics-Vision Interface

Abstract

Graphics and vision have complementary goals. A central goal of graphics is to generate realistic images of a scene, given a description of the scene. Conversely, the goal of vision is to describe a scene, give a set of real images of the scene. Progress in both fields is closely tied to our ability to model classes of scenes and to use these models efficiently in the synthesis and analysis of images. A “model” is defined, in general, as a constraint on the set of possible scenes; this paper briefly discusses, on a qualitative level, some major classes of models.