The visual hull is widely used as a proxy for novel view synthesis in computer vision. This paper introduces the safe hull, the first visual hull reconstruction technique to produce a surface containing only foreground parts. A theoretical basis underlies this novel approach which, unlike any previous work, can also identify phantom volumes attached to real objects. Using an image-based method, the visual hull is constructed with respect to each real view and used to identify safe zones in the original silhouettes. The safe zones define volumes known to only contain surface corresponding to a real object. The zones are used in a second reconstruction step to produce a surface without phantom volumes. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of this method for improving surface shape and scene realism, and its advantages over heuristic techniques.

Presented in London, November 2007 at the Conference on Visual Media Production (CVMP).