Camera-sampling field and its applications

In this paper, we propose a novel vector field, called a camera-sampling field, to represent the sampling density distribution of a pinhole camera. We give the derivation and discuss some essential properties of the camera-sampling field, including flux, divergence, curl, gradient, level surface, and sampling patterns. This vector field reveals camera-sampling concisely and facilitates camera sampling analysis. The usage for this vector field in several computer graphics applications is introduced, such as determining the splat kernel for image-based rendering, texture filtering, mipmap level selection, level transition criteria for LOD, and LDI-construction.