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Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

blogs.nvidia.com

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Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#51

Post by sennight »

cogman10 wrote: post #28
sennight wrote: post #18

I know that taste in comedy is seasonal (yes, there were a people in a time that thought vaudeville was the cat's pajamas), but has anyone ever greeted a pun with anything other than a pained sigh?

Puns aren't to make people laugh, the pained sigh is the point. It's schadenfreude for the person making the pun.

> It's schadenfreude for the person making the pun.

Nah, if it is a joke at their own expense then it is "self deprecating humor", something which is definitely designed to get a laugh. Humiliation fetish, maybe? Obviously nothing is funny past a certain point of deconstruction... especially if you find yourself defending the distinguishing difference of the "meta". Just stop making puns, easy.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#52

Post by krasin »

cinntaile wrote: post #32
krasin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, NVIDIA's achievement (and Thomas Müller in particular) is amazing. Thomas and his collaborators achieved an almost 1000x performance improvement, by a combination of algorithmical and implementation tricks. I highly recommend trying this at home: https://nvlabs.github.io/instant-ngp/ https://github.com/NVlabs/instant-ngp Very straightforward and gives better insight into what NeRF is than any shiny marketing d…

Waymo needed 2.8 million images to create that scene, I wonder how many Nvidia would need? Or was the focus only on speed? I skimmed the article and didn't really find info on that.

Waymo essentially trained several NeRF models for Block-NeRF that are rendered together. It's conceivable that NVIDIA's instant-ngp could be used for that.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#53

Post by TulliusCicero »

anyfactor wrote: post #14

Tangent I wonder what happens to most people when they see innovation such as this. Over the years I have seen numerous mind-blowing AI achievement, which essentially feel like miracles. Yet literally after an hour I forget what I even saw. I don't find these innovations to have a lasting impression on me or on the internet except for the times when these solutions are released to the public for tinkering and they en…

The problem is that when the thing is initially announced, it's not useful to anyone yet, because it's not productionized and released to the general public.

But then once it IS released to the general public, it's probably been at least several months, maybe even multiple years since the announcement, so people are like, "yawn, this is old news."

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#55

Post by jowday »

noduerme wrote: post #35
krasin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Waymo did the whole San Francisco block: https://waymo.com/research/block-nerf/

There's something very uncanny-valley about that video. I can't decide if it's the smoothness of the shading on the textures or if it's the way the parallax perspective on the buildings sometimes is just a tiny bit off. I don't generally get motion sickness from VR but I feel like this would cause it.

You’ll find this is true of all NeRFs if you spend time playing around with them. If a NeRF is trying to render part of an object that wasn’t observered in the input images, it’s going to look strange, since it’s ultimately just guessing at the appearance. The NVidia example in the link has the benefit of focusing on a single entity that’s centered in all of the input photographs - the effect is much more pronounced in large scale scenes with tons of objects, like the Waymo one. You can still see some of this distortion in the NVidia one - pay close attention to the backside of the woman’s left shoulder. You’ll see a faint haze or blur near her shoulder - the input images didn’t contain a clear shot of it from multiple angles, so the model has to guess when rendering it.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#56

Post by EugeneOZ »

elil17 wrote: post #8

My prediction/hope is that NeRFs will totally revolutionize how the film/TV industry. I can imagine: - Shooting a movie from a few cameras, creating a movie version of a NeRF using those angles, and then dynamically adding in other shots in post - Using lighting and depth information embedded in NeRFs to assist in lighting/integrating CG elements - Using NeRFs to generate virtual sets on LED walls (like those on The…

It will boost cut-scenes in games as well.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#58

Post by the_af »

lowdest wrote: post #47
baron816 wrote: post #31

It would be really great to recreate loved ones after they have past in some sort of digital space. As I’ve gotten older, and my parents get older as well, I’ve been thinking more about what my life will be like in old age (and beyond too). I’ve also been thinking what I would want “heaven” to be. Eternal life doesn’t appeal to me much. Imagine living a quadrillion years. Even as a god, that would be miserable. That…

>Imagine living a quadrillion years. Even as a god, that would be miserable. This seems very subjective, I don't agree at all.

Agreed it's subjective.

That said, what would you do with your quadrillion year long lifespan, assuming you're healthy during it? It's way past everything you can do and learn, and cosmic level events are not what the human mind can perceive as they slowly unfold...

I would like to live a couple thousand years though, as long as my loved ones get to be along for the ride. Though I wonder if my loved ones would eventually become my hated ones...

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#59

Post by p1esk »

sorenjan wrote: post #44

I don't really understand why NeRFs would be particularly useful in more than a few niche cases, perhaps because I don't fully understand what they really are. My impression is that you take a bunch of photos in various places and directions, then you use those as samples of a 3D function that describes the full scene, and optimize a neural network to minimize the difference between the true light field and what's de…

What happens if you want to animate part of a NeRF, or crop it, or change it in any way? Do you have to throw away all trained coefficients and start again from training data?

You don’t change NeRF (the model). You change the point of view of an observer.

Re: Nvidia Research Turns 2D Photos into 3D Scenes

#60

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

baron816 wrote: post #31

It would be really great to recreate loved ones after they have past in some sort of digital space. As I’ve gotten older, and my parents get older as well, I’ve been thinking more about what my life will be like in old age (and beyond too). I’ve also been thinking what I would want “heaven” to be. Eternal life doesn’t appeal to me much. Imagine living a quadrillion years. Even as a god, that would be miserable. That…

My gut reaction to 'recreating loved ones in VR' is that it would be torturous more than soothing.

Once a person dies, they're gone. The world is different, and nothing will bring them back. Spending time with a simulacrum isn't really spending time with a loved one.

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