A system, method and user interface for interactive mesh
painting of 2D images for iterative high quality 3D modeling
is disclosed herein. The system takes a set of calibrated 2D
images as input and provides an intuitive user interface based
on simple interactive 2D painting operations. The output is a
textured, high quality 3D model that on average is obtained
after just a feW minutes of interaction. This can be achieved by
utilizing only a minimum number of different modes (pan
ing, Zooming, painting) When interacting With the 2D
images. In an embodiment, a component of the system is a
GPU-based multi-vieW stereo reconstruction scheme, Which
is implemented by an incremental reconstruction algorithm,
that runs in the background during user interaction With a 2D
image so that the user does not notice any signi?cant response
delay in generation of the corresponding modeled 3D surface.