About CamSim

CamSim is a camera simulation library developed at the Computer Graphics Group, University of Siegen. It it free software based on the MIT license.

Note: this project is superseded by WurblPT, which is a full-featured path tracer and can therefore simulate all effects, including precise multipath effects, without the restrictions imposed by the rasterization approach on which CamSim is based.

Features

• Supported cameras types:
  • RGB cameras, optionally physically plausible, with OpenGL-style materials and lighting
  • Amplitude-modulated continuous-wave Time-of-Flight cameras (AMCW ToF, e.g. PMD cameras), with 4 phase images, physically plausible, reusing OpenGL-style materials and lighting as far as it makes sense
• Simulation:
  • light-transport based information (RGB, PMD phases and result)
  • geometry information (positions, normals, depth and range, object/shape/ triangle indices)
  • temporal flow information (2D and 3D flow)
• Scene:
  • Arbitrary number of light sources (point lights, spot lights, and directional lights)
  • Light sources with measured intensity distribution and structured-light projecting light sources
  • Materials with ambient, diffuse, specular, gloss, emission and lightness maps; transparency (but not translucency); bump or normal maps; BRDF-based lighting (in the simplest case using the modified Phong model)
  • Builtin functions to create scenes using simple geometries (quads, cubes, cylinders, cones, spheres, tori, teapots, bunnies, etc)
• Animation:
  • Simple linear animations of position, orientation, and scale
  • For camera, light sources, and objects
• Oversampling:
  • Spatial, with custom weights (especially useful for PMD simulation)
  • Temporal (for correct motion artefacts in light-transport based simulations)
• Noise and Effects:
  • Gaussian white noise
  • Lens distortion compatible to OpenCV (radial and tangential)
  • Thins lens vignetting effect
• Import and Export:
  • Import of arbitrary models via ASSIMP
  • Export to RAW, CSV, PNM, PNG, PFS, GTA, MAT, HDF5
• Other:
  • Multi-GPU support
  • Multicore CPU support for export (data export is typically the bottleneck)

Relevant Papers

The following papers are relevant for CamSim. If you use this software, please cite the appropriate paper, depending on the features you are using:

• General simulation model, including AMCW ToF illumination and sensor: M. Lambers, S. Hoberg, A. Kolb: Simulation of Time-of-Flight Sensors for Evaluation of Chip Layout Variants. In IEEE Sensors Journal, 15(7), 2015, pages 4019-4026.

• Extension of the illumination model to single-bounce indirect illumination via reflective shadow maps: D. Bulczak, M. Lambers, A. Kolb: Quantified, Interactive Simulation of AMCW ToF Camera Including Multipath Effects. In MDPI Sensors, 18(1), 2018, pages 1424-8220.

• Lens distortion simulation: M. Lambers, H. Sommerhoff, A. Kolb: Realistic Lens Distortion Rendering. In Proc. Int. Conf. in Central Europe on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision (WSCG), 2018.