Creating arbitrary 3D objects for PostGIS

3D information need not only come from things such as LiDAR, nor be purely synthesized from 2D geometries and associated attributes as in the Constructing and serving buildings 2.5 D and Using ST_Extrude to extrude building footprints recipes, but can also be derived from the principles of computer vision. The process of calculating 3D information from motion between images is known as Structure from Motion (SfM). As a computer vision concept, we can leverage SfM to generate 3D information in ways similar to how the human mind perceives the world in 3D and further store and process that information in a PostGIS database.

Tip

Computer vision is a discipline within computer science focused on the automated analysis, such as using images to extract information from the world in a way that can be interpreted by computers in ways similar to human vision. An excellent summary can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision.

A number of open...