Okay, not really talking about dedicated 3D input devices. What I mean to
ask is, has anyone thought of or perhaps even done modelling with
multiple-view camera setups?

What I have in mind is building a clay or plastic model then photographing
it using a digital camera. This setup would include the following:
1. the real-world model containing marked control points for surface
extrapolation
2. a camera, moving around the model in an arbitrary fashion, taking
pictures along the way (not necessarily in a pre-defined path)
3. a marker - a small model, such as a transparent cube, which would model
the origin and axes. This marker would serve as reference for the scale and
orientation for every photograph

Now, what I'd like the tools, with which to accomplish this task, to do is
to calculate the marked points on the model. This process would not be
fully automated, rather each image would first be reviewed by the user and
the user him/herself would mark the appropriate points on the photograph of
the model to define the 2D points which correspond to specific 3D points on
the model. Also, the user would need to mark the "origin cube" to define
reference points. After this stage of point-and-mark is done, the program
calculates the 3D points for each of the photographs and uses statistical
analysis to determine the most likely position of a point on the model.

I'm not looking for depth-of-field algorithms to produce dense 3D models;
just the points, so I can model, say, NURBS surfaces using those reference
points. I've looked at some sites offering some image rectification and
affine transformation with projection, but they're all built for dense 3D
reconstruction.

Here's one example:
http://www-sop.inria.fr/robotvis/personnel/qdelam/ArticleFG98html/Article.forhtml.html

It concerns moving a modelled hand to fit the depth-of-field produced by the
program.

Any information regarding these kinds of calculation? I guess I'm not alone
on this subject, who hasn't thought of simplifying modelling to, actually,
child's play? ;)

Thanks,

-Klemen

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