Endless Loops: Detecting and Animating Periodic Patterns

This repository contains the implementation of the paper titled "Endless Loops: Detecting and Animating Periodic Patterns in Still Image." The paper introduces a method for detecting and animating periodic patterns in images, creating seamless looping animations.

Overview

The implemented solution consists of several stages:

1D Repetitions Detection: Detects image repetitions along a 1D curve centered in the mask and aligned with the specified direction of motion.
Displacement Assignment with CRF: Utilizes Conditional Random Field (CRF) optimization to assign displacement vectors to pixels inside the mask, considering a set of labels obtained from the 1D repetitions.
Post-processing the Displacement Field: Improves the smoothness of the displacement field obtained from the CRF optimization using Gaussian kernel smoothing and spline interpolation.
Generation of Video Frames: Generates animation frames for a sequence of time stamps, blending forward and backward warps to create a seamless looping animation.
Save and Load Displacement Fields: Functions for saving and loading displacement fields, facilitating the reuse of precomputed fields.

Dependencies

Python 3.x
NumPy
OpenCV
PyDenseCRF (for CRF optimization)
Other dependencies as specified in the paper or code comments

Usage

Clone the Repository:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/endless-loops.git
cd endless-loops

Install Dependencies:
```
pip install -r requirements.txt
```
Run the Implementation:
```
python infer.py
```

Notes

Replace image filenames, mask filenames, and other parameters with your actual data.
Adjust parameters, such as the number of frames in the animation or the alpha function, according to your preferences.

Citation

If you use this implementation in your research or project, please consider citing the original paper:

@article{halperin2021endless,
  author = {Halperin, Tavi and Hakim, Hanit and Vantzos, Orestis and Hochman, Gershon and Benaim,
      Netai and Sassy, Lior and Kupchik, Michael and Bibi, Ofir and Fried, Ohad},
  title = {Endless Loops: Detecting and Animating Periodic Patterns in Still Images},
  journal = {ACM Trans. Graph.},
  issue_date = {August 2021},
  volume = {40},
  number = {4},
  month = aug,
  year = {2021},
  articleno = {142},
  numpages = {12},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3450626.3459935},
  doi = {10.1145/3450626.3459935},
  publisher = {ACM},
}

License

This project is licensed under the AGPLv3 or any later version License - see the LICENSE file for details.