Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) BUILDUP: Interactive Creation of Urban Scenes from Large Photo Collections Jose Ribelles · Diego Gutierrez · Alyosha Efros Received: date / Accepted: date Abstract We propose a system for creating images of urban scenes composed of the large structures typical in such environments. Our system provides the user with a precomputed library of image-based 3D objects, such as roads, side- walks and buildings, obtained from a large collection of photographs. When the user picks the 3D location of a new object to insert, the system retrieves objects that have all the required properties (location, orientation and light- ing). Then, the user interface guides the user to add more objects enabling non-experts to make a new composition in a fast and intuitive way. Unlike prior work, the entire image composition process is done in the 3D space of the scene, therefore inconsistent scale or perspective distortion does not arise, and occlusions are properly handled. Keywords Image databases · 3D scene composition · Picture generation 1 Introduction The promise of effortless visual content creation has always been a large part of the appeal of computer graphics. The huge popularity of contemporary world- building games like Minecraft has demonstrated people’s desire for new ways to create, to build, to express themselves visually. But the computer graphics employed in such games is still quite rudimentary. Bruce Branit’s short film J. Ribelles Institute of New Imaging Technologies, Universitat Jaume I, Castellon, Spain E-mail: ribelles@uji.es D. Gutierrez Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain E-mail: diegog@unizar.es A. Efros University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, USA E-mail: efros@eecs.berkeley.edu