Messages

1

Feature Requests / No disk space left error - Allow us to clean up and tell Metashape to retry

« on: July 04, 2024, 03:17:31 PM »

When a process is running or has completed and there is not enough disk space to proceed, Metashape will pop up an error dialogue box that warns the user that there is no disk space, at which point the action has 100% failed with no way to retry or resume.

Could you put a Retry\Resume button on this dialogue type, so that we can free up disk space and carry on without losing the work already done, it could be that 20+ hours of processing has just completed and is being lost due to something that can be easily dealt with.

After the user has freed up disk space all Metashape has to do, is retry that action it was stuck on, and the process would continue without any loss.

2

General / Re: Solved: Metashape on headless Linux server

« on: June 23, 2024, 11:45:46 AM »

It was the headless that got me :-)

Headless usually means no UI at all. Thanks for sharing I may at some point have a play with Linux, have you done any performance analysis compared to a Windows OS?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/server-core/what-is-server-core

Yes, to clarify the system did not have display hardware or a full desktop environment, but I was accessing the GUI remotely. I think at the time I used X forwarding over SSH, but other options include Sunshine and VNC with VirtualGL.

3

General / Re: Ultimate PC Metashape Processing 20k+ images 2024?

« on: June 23, 2024, 11:43:46 AM »

On those two spec's you'd get 20K of photographs processed in a day, two at the worst.

Like I said the main bottleneck is the CPU and how fast the memory is, disk IOP's are another smaller bottleneck due to the photographs being touched during the life-cycle of a render, as well as all the temporary files that are created (cache) and read from and written to.

About 5k of photographs for a low-end spec'd machine, two or three days end-to-end, and that's alignment, mesh, texture, sounds about right.

Which part of the whole process is the slowest one?

I’m working on an older machine about 5+ years and we have upgraded as much as we can but it’s really slow and I’m currently outsourcing anything over about 5000 photos.  Below are two machines I can get a good deal on and wondered if they might be suitable?  I am doing 20,000+ photos using the P1 and looking for a machine that can chew through this in decent times.

4

General / Re: Ultimate PC Metashape Processing 20k+ images 2024?

« on: June 23, 2024, 11:35:09 AM »

They are giving you a choice of an Intel or AMD processor.

I would continue using Intel for now but its a personal choice. If I was to make a jump it'd be to the Xeon so I can spec up a server-class platform, different league and far more costly.

Have a read of this to give you an idea of AMD's Threadripper chip versus intel's i9: https://versus.com/en/amd-ryzen-threadripper-pro-5965wx-vs-intel-core-i9-13900k

The 2nd spec machine:

* Has DDR4 not DDR5 - If you're investing now get the latest tech not a generation behind, they probably did this to amp out the memory with larger memory modules?
* You won't get much mileage from having x2 GPU's, Agisoft could comment on how their GPU load works so ask them, they might put threads onto the two GPU's or it might just end up being done on one. I honestly don't think the bottleneck is going to be the GPU, you've already maxed that out with a 4090 RTX and 24GB of GPU memory. The bottleneck is going to be the CPU and Memory. My 4090 RTK eats up the GPU load, the GPU isn't the bottleneck it just has to chomp down quickly on any workload it receives and if you watch Metashape you'll see it isn't 100% maxing out the GPU constantly, it feeds it workloads, they are processed lighting fast (this is why you up-spec the GPU) and the rest of the time is spent in CPU and Memory phases.

Explore a RAID setup for the disks, RAID 10 will halve the available disk space but give you 1) Redundancy 2) faster disk IOP's especially with SSD's or M.2's (practically the same thing) - Do some research on RAID and specifically RAID 10. Find a decent PCI RAID card or use the mainboards built-in RAID support. I would 100% recommend that you get a backup power supply when using RAID, their not that expensive, if you lose power while writing to a RAID disk it can cause data loss or corruption especially if you turn off buffering to gain extra performance. As I said mitigate this by picking up a backup power supply, they plug into the USB port of the computer and tell the computer to power down cleanly after the battery is used up.

Hope that helps!

Thank you, he said it can take a max 192gb Ramm.

They just sent me this and said  this is available but it’s three times the price, do you think it would be much better or the other one with more Ram and SSD is ok?

Case: Fractal Design Define 7 XL
CPU: Threadripper Pro 5965x
CPU cooling : Fractal Design Celsius S36
Motherboard: Asrock WRX80 Creator R2
PSU: Be Quiet Dark Power 13 1600w
RAM: DDR4 256gb(3200)
GPU: 2 x Asus TUF RTX 4090
M.2: 2TB M.2 Kingston x2 (4TB total)
SSD: 2TB x4 (8TB total)

5

General / Texture selection

« on: June 21, 2024, 10:58:57 AM »

Apologies if this has already been asked.

I remember reading about how image selection for texturing is handled in Metashape but I cannot recall the details.

I want to prioritise sets of images to be used as texture-sets for specific areas of a model, these image sets are only created for specific areas in the model, buildings and such like.

Is there an algorithm designed to detect if the GPS coordinates in the images places those images closer to the geometry being textured, and therefore they are selected for texturing those areas as a result?

I scan using a drone + RTK, image positions in the scene\model is therefore known, and I want Metashape to select those images for texturing purposes based on their proximity to the item being rendered, and for those areas that do not have close-up images to fall back to the other image sets.

I scan from several feet above ground level and several feet away from the item of interest to get good quality imagery, as well as to help firm up geometry in those areas. That's my goal in Metashape.

Thanks in advance,

6

General / Re: Solved: Metashape on headless Linux server

« on: June 21, 2024, 10:45:12 AM »

Nice, well done for getting it working.

I need to interact with Metashape quite a lot, batching and automation isn't something I can use across a projects life-cycle here, and I wonder why you'd use headless then try to get the UI working? Do you remote in to view the UI or view it on the server itself?

I like the idea of a headless rendering engine, but one that I can RDP or remote into and have no screen rendering lag.

7

General / Re: Ultimate PC Metashape Processing 20k+ images 2024?

« on: June 21, 2024, 10:41:33 AM »

This is a computer built at a shop they recommended, do you think it would be a good one to start with?

Intel Core i9 14900K (6.0GHz max clock speed),
24 Cores, 32 Thread CPU, Socket LGA 1700

Asus ROG MAXIMUS Z790 FORMULA LGA1700
DDR5 ATX

ASUS - ROG-THOR-1200P2-GAMING
ASUS ROG RYUJIN III 360 ARGB White Edition
Liquid CPU Cooler

Corsair DOMINATOR TITANIUM RGB White 96GB
(2x48GB) 6600MHz DDR5

8 x Corsair iCUE LINK QX120 RGB PWM 120mm
White Fan

Crucial T700 4TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCle 5.0 SSD

Microsoft Windows 11 Home, 64 Bit

Samsung 990 PRO 4TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCle 4.0
SSD

ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4090 24GB
GDDR6X White Edition

I prefer Windows 10, solid as a rock, stable and efficient, Windows 11 is being referred to as the "Windows Vista" of releases, folk are actually waiting for Windows 12 to see what it is like.

A 4090 with 24GB is what I have, tears through the GPU load.

The CPU is good for what you need. A lot of processing is done on the CPU.

The memory is enough but if you can get it to 192GB, and your mainboard will support this, it'll really help finish this render engine off.

Also add in more disks, SSD's or M.2's, the mainboard supports more being added. Last thing you want to do is file system house keeping after 2 or 3 projects, and a cold-storage disk to archive stuff off too is wise.

Specs for your mainboard are here: https://rog.asus.com/motherboards/rog-maximus/rog-maximus-z790-hero-model/spec/

8

General / Re: Product release thread for notification purposes

« on: June 21, 2024, 09:44:41 AM »

Hello Robert,

Do you think, if it would be helpful, if we create a closed thread in general that will duplicate the Change Log information? I.e. for each minor release a new post will be added to the thread that lists all the notable changes and features?

Yes pin the closed thread to the top in General, and pour in the change log for the interim\minor and major releases, that would be very helpful!

Thanks Alexey.

9

General / Re: Product release thread for notification purposes

« on: June 14, 2024, 09:30:54 AM »

I like to read release notes and judge if I'm going to benefit from a minor releases updates, or even a pre-release.

10

General / Re: Viewer for ANDROID or iOs?

« on: June 14, 2024, 09:29:29 AM »

Nira.app definitely the way to go, it costs but I think for a company it is very reasonable, and their support service is rock solid.

11

General / Product release thread for notification purposes

« on: June 10, 2024, 06:50:34 PM »

Alexey you posted pre-release information in that thread so I naturally asked about it. Here's a distinct thread so I can ask more.

How would one know a pre-release or minor version has been released?

And no, I'm not F5'ing the download page daily, or camping out in your offices on the off chance I might overhear you talking about it.

I'd prefer if you created and curated a thread for this purpose, so we can subscribe too it and get notifications. Work smarter not harder.

----


Hello Robert,

This thread is related only to the block mode texturing issue.

2.1.2 will be released soon (a couple of weeks or so) and since it is a minor update there is no particular thread related to it.
Logged
Best regards,
Alexey Pasumansky,
Agisoft LLC

----

Alexey is there a thread that you update for release information? So I can subscribe to it and get notifications.

----


Latest pre-release version (build 18315 published yesterday) is available by the direct download links:
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/download.agisoft.com/metashape-pro_2_1_2_x64.msi
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/download.agisoft.com/metashape-pro_2_1_2.dmg
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/download.agisoft.com/metashape-pro_2_1_2_amd64.tar.gz


ilia, if you have replaced some model blocks and would like to rebuild the texture only for them, you can use "skip textured blocks" option in the Build Texture dialog. In this case the texture will be preserved in those blocks that have already a texture applied.
Logged
Best regards,
Alexey Pasumansky,
Agisoft LLC

12

Feature Requests / Re: Please improve the algorithm for building texture with blocked model.

« on: June 10, 2024, 06:21:34 PM »

To answer those other two questions.

In 2.1.1. if you default the Block model the texturing function ignores the enabled\disabled flag on a block and textures all blocks irrespective of their status. Defaulting a single block in a block model and running the texture function textures just that block, other blocks are ignored.

Hope this helps.

... For an example, if I want to texture just a single block -- is it enough just to select this block or I need to disable the rest?

13

Feature Requests / Re: Please improve the algorithm for building texture with blocked model.

« on: June 10, 2024, 06:16:11 PM »

2.1.2  pre-release, awesome.

Alexey is there a thread that you update for release information? So I can subscribe to it and get notifications.

14

General / Re: Tiled model from selected tiles inside a block model

« on: May 09, 2024, 09:59:38 PM »

I just tested and if you disable a set of tiles in a Block Model they are ignored when rendering the textures, so in your case you could prefix the tiles names with High or Low and disable each set before you render, no need for two projects.

And merging enabled tiles produces a beautiful Model if that is the route you want to take.

15

Feature Requests / Re: Prioritize closest photos for textures, prioritize a group of photos for texture

« on: May 07, 2024, 10:47:49 PM »

+1

Ideal if Metashape selects photographs for textures based on their distance to the polygons being textured, it could be relatively easy to measure the distances and choose the closest as the candidate for a texture.