Indoor Heat Estimation from a Single Visible-Light Panorama

TL;DR

This paper presents a new image-based method to estimate indoor lighting and heat distribution using paired indoor-outdoor HDR panoramas, combining light transport modeling with heat transfer simulations for realistic visualization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that jointly estimates indoor illumination and thermal conditions from panoramic images, integrating light transport and heat transfer modeling.

Findings

Heat maps validated against infrared thermal images.

Supports photorealistic visualization of indoor heat distribution.

Enables integrated light and heat estimation for virtual staging.

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel image-based rendering technique for jointly estimating indoor lighting and thermal conditions from paired indoor-outdoor high dynamic range (HDR) panoramas. Our method uses the indoor panorama to estimate the 3D floor layout, while the corresponding outdoor panorama serves as an environment map to infer spatially-varying illumination and material properties. Assuming indoor surfaces are Lambertian and that all heat originates from outdoor visible light, we model the relationship between light transport and heat transfer, and perform transient heat simulations to generate indoor temperature distributions. The simulated heat maps are validated against real-world thermal images captured with an infrared camera. This approach supports photorealistic and physically informed visualization, enabling integrated light and heat estimation to advance traditional virtual home staging.