Stereoscopic Inpainting

A step in 3D conversion.

During 2D to stereoscopic 3D conversion objects in the scene are cut out, placed in depth and given volume. Because of the parallax disparity between the left eye and the newly created right eye, areas that are in real life occluded by foreground objects are now showing as holes in the middle ground and background.

Skilled artists paint these areas in which is referred to as “inpainting.” There are automatic and semi-automatic tools that aid the process, but manual approach works the best for high quality conversion.