Addressing the Shape-Radiance Ambiguity in View-Dependent Radiance Fields

Abstract: We present a method for handling view-dependent information in radiance fields to help with convergence and quality of 3D reconstruction. Radiance fields with view-dependence suffers from the so called shape-radiance ambiguity, which can lead to incorrect geometry given a high angular resolution of view-dependent colors. We propose the addition of a difference plane in front of each camera, with the purpose of separating view-dependent and Lambertian components during training. We also propose an additional step where we train, but do not store, a low-resolution view-dependent function that helps to isolate the surface if such a separation is proven difficult. These additions have a small impact on performance and memory usage but enables reconstruction of scenes with highly specular components without any other explicit handling of view-dependence such as Spherical Harmonics.