Patent ID: 7200262

Claim:
A 3-dimensional image processing method, which obtains 3-dimensional image data for reproducing an object as a 3-dimensional image, comprising: a first step, of obtaining photographed image data from a photography device by illuminating an object with an area light source having luminance distribution with 2-dimensional expansion as observed from the surface of the object; and a second step, of estimating surface attributes of said object from photographed image data obtained in said first step and photography environment information existing at the time the photographed image data is obtained in said first step, wherein, in said second step, a luminance-distribution-type bi-directional reflectance distribution function, which indicates the distribution of reflectivity for illumination light having a predetermined distribution as to the incident angle for each portion of the object, is estimated, following which the luminance-distribution-type bi-directional reflectance distribution function is converted into a bi-directional reflectance distribution function which yields the reflectance of each portion on the surface of the object for the illumination light with a concentrated incident angle to the object, and wherein both the luminance distribution at the light source portion of the area illumination light and the specular reflection components of the luminance-distribution-type bi-directional reflectance distribution function can be described by Gaussian distribution, and wherein the standard deviation of the specular reflection component of said bi-directional reflectance distribution function is obtained by the following relational expression: σ′ 2 =σ 2 +σ L 2 , wherein σ′ represents the standard deviation of the specular reflection component of luminance-distribution-type bi-directional reflectance distribution function, and σ L represents the standard deviation of apparent luminance distribution at the light source portion of illumination light.