Photometric three-dimensional facial capture and relighting

A method for generating a three-dimensional surface, comprising:

• capturing an image of a target object with two cameras, one camera positioned to a left of the target object, one camera position to a right of the target object, wherein the target object is illuminated by three sets of red-green-blue (RGB) lights positioned in an array about the target object;
• and
• processing the image in three frame intervals, wherein processing the image comprises:
• recovering an unknown surface at each frame within a three-frame interval;
• and
• recovering a backward motion and forward motion within the three-frame interval.

A system for reconstructing a three-dimensional surface, comprising:

• at least two cameras, wherein a first camera of the at least two cameras is positioned to capture a right image of a target object, and wherein a second camera is positioned to capture a left image of the target object;
• at least three sets of red-green-blue (RGB) lights positioned in an array about the target object;
• and
• a controller configured to generate a three-dimensional surface of the target object by iteratively reconstructing a surface estimate of the target object and aligning images of the target object using motion estimation until the images converge, wherein the images are processed in three-frame intervals.