Method and apparatus for reconstructing 3D shape model of object by using multi-view image information

An apparatus for reconstructing a 3D shape model of an object by using multi-view image information, the apparatus comprising:

• a silhouette/color information extractor receiving multi-view images obtained by photographing the object from multiple viewpoints in a voxel space containing voxels of a predetermined size in a 3D space containing the object, and extracting silhouette information and color information of the multi-view images;
• a visual hull reconstructor reconstructing visual hulls by using silhouette intersection reflecting the silhouette information;
• a polygon approximator approximating polygons of cross-sections of the visual hulls to a natural geometric shape of the object by using the color information, along with the cross-sections of the visual hulls;
• a mesh structure creator expressing a 3D geometric shape of the object by connecting the approximated polygons to create a mesh structure;
• a color texture map creator extracting color textures of a surface of the object by projecting meshes of the mesh structure to the multi-view image;
• and
• a 3D shape model creator creating a 3D shape model by modeling natural shape information and surface color information of the objects that contain the mesh structure and the color textures corresponding to the meshes of the mesh structure.