Virtual Home Staging and Relighting
from a Single Panorama under Natural Illumination

Guanzhou Ji, Azadeh O. Sawyer, Srinivasa G. Narasimhan
Carnegie Mellon University

We propose a novel inverse rendering method that enables the transformation of existing indoor panoramas with new indoor furniture layouts under natural illumination. To achieve this, we captured indoor HDR panoramas along with real-time outdoor hemispherical HDR photographs. Indoor and outdoor HDR images were linearly calibrated with measured absolute luminance values for accurate scene relighting. Our method consists of four key components: (1) panoramic furniture detection and removal, (2) automatic floor layout design, (3) global rendering with scene geometry, new furniture objects, and a real-time outdoor photograph, and (4) editing camera position, outdoor illumination, scene textures, and electrical light. Additionally, we contribute a new calibrated HDR (Cali-HDR) dataset that consists of 137 paired indoor and outdoor photographs.

Overview

Illustration of Our Rendering Approach: A real-world scene is captured at 11:27 AM (cloudy sky condition). Different furniture objects are removed from the existing room, and the empty scene is refurnished with new virtual furniture objects. A new panorama is then virtually rendered with edited camera position, outdoor illumination at 01:00 PM (clear sky condition), scene textures, and electrical light.

Captured Scene
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Virtual Rendered Scene
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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Automatic Floor Layout

We edit the existing scenes with new floor layout. For empty scenes, we refurnish the scene with new furniture objects. For the furnished scenes, we detect and remove the existing furniture objects, and then virtually render the scenes with new furniture objects.

Room 1

Comparison between Captured Scene and Virtual Rendered Scene
Captured Scene
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Virtual Rendered Scene
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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Room 2

Captured Scene
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Virtual Rendered Scene
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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Room 3

Captured Scene
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Virtual Rendered Scene
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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Room 4

Captured Scene
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Virtual Rendered Scene
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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Editing Camera Positions

Camera Position 1
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Camera Position 2
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Camera Position 3
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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The camera position for virtual staging can be flexibly customized inside the rooms. Our rendering method integrates complete 3D scene geometry (including both room geometry and furniture objects), outdoor environment map, and material textures. By changing the camera position, the scene will be rendered from different view positions.

View to Outdoor Scene

Virtual Indoor Scene 1
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Virtual Indoor Scene 2
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Virtual Indoor Scene 3
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Outdoor Perspective View 1
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Outdoor Perspective View 2
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Outdoor Perspective View 3
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When the camera position is closer to the window, the window can be opened up. The real-time outdoor scene can be observed from various indoor locations.

Editing Scene Materials

Comparison between the Existing Scene and Refurnished Scene
Rendered Existing Scene
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Virtual Rendered Scene
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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The 3D room geometry can be customized with new surface textures in the rendering model. In this example, we changed the wall painting and floor textures of the existing room.

Editing Sun Positions

Edited Outdoor Images

Outdoor Scene 1
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Outdoor Scene 2
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Outdoor Scene 3
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In the real world, the outdoor scene changes throughout different times of the day. In this section, we focus on editing the direct illumination of the sun in the outdoor image, allowing the indoor scene to be rendered under varying sun positions. The figures above demonstrate the edited outdoor images under different weather conditions and at various time points.

Virtual Rendered Scenes

Rendered Scene 1 with Captured Outdoor Image
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Rendering with Edited Outdoor Images
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Rendered Scene 2 with Captured Outdoor Image
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Rendering with Edited Outdoor Images
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In Rendered Scene 1, we add direct sunlight into the cloudy outdoor images, the scene is rendered with various sun positions during the day. In Rendered Scene 2, we adjust the sun position in the afternoon, allowing the indoor scene to showcase its changing appearance as the sun moves from early afternoon to late afternoon.

Adding Electrical Light

Comparison between the Scenes Rendered with Natural Light and Electrical Light
Rendered Daytime Scene
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Rendered Nighttime Scene 1 (LED 6336k)
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Rendered Nighttime Scene 2 (LED 2660k)
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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Perspective View
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We achieved virtual staging for the night scene, when the virtual scene is only illuminated by electrical lighting with accurate spectra. The virtual scenes are rendered under different spectra and display unique indoor appearance.

Calibrated HDR (Cali-HDR) Dataset

Indoor Panoramas
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Outdoor Images
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we contribute a new calibrated HDR (Cali-HDR) dataset that consists of 137 paired indoor and outdoor photographs. In our work, we calibrate the captured HDR panoramas using absolute luminance value measured in each scene. This calibration ensures that our HDR images accurately represent realistic spatially varying lighting conditions. To access the dataset, please visit here.

Source Code

To access the source code of this work, please visit here.

Acknowledgement

This work was partially supported by a gift from Zillow Group, USA.