Abstract

The question addressed here is: “What essential information about natural scenes would have to be simulated to provide convincing animated pictures?” The answer is arrived at through a survey of parts of the vision and image analysis literature. The aim is to provide a useful synthesis of aspects of these fields which is relevant to computer graphics. This synthesis is presented as a foundation for realistic computer animation which is preferable to physics.

We use perspective projection and optic flow as a working example to illustrate some of the ideas. In doing this we hope to dispel some preconceptions about what is true to reality and what is not.

• Edwin Blake (ZA), Department of Computer Science, Queen Mary College, University of London, UK. This was written while I was a PhD student and just before I moved to the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Department of Interactive Systems, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
  [Update 2025: I am currently retired from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town, ZA] https://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~edwin