Topics

1

General / Point Cloud Generation - Very Slow after 74% with Low CPU

« on: November 27, 2025, 07:56:46 PM »

Hi, This is not really a problem but I am curious to know what's going on. I am working with a 9,210 20MP image dataset. Currently generating the point cloud, the depth maps took about six hours to build, it is now generating the point cloud but at 74% it slowed down with only about 5% CPU utilisation. The total time currently is 22 hours 21 minutes and it is estimating around four hours to complete, although it has taken four hours to go from five hours remaining to four hours remaining! Workstation spec is an Intel i9 10980XE 18 core with 256GB RAM and 2 x GF RTX 3070 Ti. Images are on a fast NVMe SSD.

The images are from two drones, a Matrice 4E and a Mavic 3E. Alignment was done on high, and I didn't use the fit additional corrections option when optimising cameras which can slow things down. Point cloud generation was set to high with aggressive filtering, and both calculate point colours and point confidence enabled.

I'm curious to know why it reaches a point where there is little CPU use? Is there anything I can do to speed things up in the future? I regularly process datasets of around 3,000 to 5,000 images and it seems to use a lot more CPU to almost the end of point cloud generation.

TIA Rory

2

General / Mac M4 Max vs Win 11 Intel i9 24 Core 2 x 3080Ti

« on: August 21, 2025, 05:56:46 PM »

I've been evaluating Metashape on my Mac Studio M4 Max with 128GB RAM and 40 core GPU. I normally use it on a dedicated Win 11 workstation with 24 core i9 processor, 256GB RAM and 2 x 3080Ti GPUs. The Mac is actually faster for depth maps and building the point cloud, but it is painfully slow matching images. As an example, a 588 image 4 channel MS dataset (2,352 images total) takes 10 minutes to match and 19 minutes to align on the Windows workstation, compared to over 2 hours to match, and 16 minutes to align on the Mac. Both were set to the same alignment and matching settings, generic and reference pre-selection, 40,000 key points and 4,000 tie points, high quality,

I assume Metashape is not leveraging the GPU for matching on the Mac, but if that's the case why does it use it when building the depth maps? I've just finished processing a slightly larger 697 image MS dataset on the Mac, it generated the depth maps in high quality mild filtering in just 10 minutes with high GPU use, and the point cloud took just 17 minutes.

I was about to purchase another Metashape Pro license for the Mac, but the poor matching performance has put me off for the moment.

3

General / Refine Mesh - 4 days!

« on: July 30, 2025, 10:38:54 PM »

I have a model of a High Voltage DC switching station, it was built from the point cloud in high quality and decimated from 24M to 5M faces. There is a lot of detail on the building such as railings around the roof which are not great, so I'm trying the refine model option with high quality and 10 iterations. It started this morning at 11 hours, but now it's at 12% with over four days to go. The images are 45MP from a P1 camera. I can't tie the workstation up for the length of time so would there be any quality benefit using just two or three iterations rather than 10?

Workstation is fairly high spec with a 12th gen Intel i9 24 cores, 2 x RTX3080ti and 256GB RAM.

TIA,

Rory

4

General / Is Licensing Fixed?

« on: August 22, 2022, 07:49:53 PM »

We bought our new workstation at the same time there were licensing issues so have been using the spare license up until now. Our old workstation is about to be sold so I need to deactivate the license on it and activate it on the new one. Can you confirm the licensing issues are fixed?

Thanks, Rory

5

General / Swapping Images After Alignment

« on: August 16, 2022, 10:09:36 PM »

Hi, I am working on a 750 hectare 7900 image RTK drone survey made up of 33 survey segments of around 240 images. After alignment there are some notably darker sections where the ev fell below 0.0, roughly one or two stops underexposed. Rather than correct the exposure and realign from scratch, is it possible to simply swap out the underexposed images with the corrected ones? Obviously I would ensure the folder and filenames are identical.

If I use Lightroom to correct exposure it will remove most of the EXIF and XMP data, however now that alignment is complete does it need these data?

Thanks,

Rory

6

General / Problem with Network Paths

« on: March 12, 2022, 06:32:01 PM »

Hi,

I am trying out network processing but having a major issue with paths. The project is on the D drive of workstation 1, this drive is mapped as the O drive on workstation 2. No matter what I try workstation 2 always has a path error. I run the node using this command:

"C:\Program Files\Agisoft\Metashape Pro\"metashape --node --host 192.168.1.114 --root "O:\Metashape Projects\MWOW"

As soon as I start processing I get this error:

2022-03-12 15:14:29 [192.168.1.114:50713] failed #8 BuildOrthomosaic: Can't open file: The system cannot find the path specified (3): O:/Metashape Projects/MWOW/Full Site.psx

The path in the GUI of workstation 1 is D:\Metashape Projects\

Does the project have to be on a network drive for this to work?

Also, when using a network node to process, do both machines process or do I need to start a node on workstation 1?

Thanks,

Rory

7

General / Quick_Layout.py

« on: March 08, 2022, 11:14:35 PM »

I have used the quick_layout python script for aligning water and forest areas where auto align doesn’t work, usually prior to building the DEM and ortho. Is it ok to use it with not aligned RTK cameras prior to building the dense cloud? Working on a large project with some forestry and would like the images included in the dense cloud.

8

General / Error Opening Project - Information

« on: January 23, 2022, 02:13:27 PM »

We are currently processing a 37km corridor working in 4.5km blocks and merging the chunks for three flight segments at a time. The images are from a Zenmuse P1 at 1.1cm/px so very high resolution.

When opening one of the projects this morning I received an error about a corrupt zip archive and the project wouldn't open. The merged chunks are huge, however I opened the project yesterday without issue so not sure how it got corrupted. I tried opening the <path-to-project>\02 Segments 4-6 Files\project.zip\6\0\point_cloud\\point_cloud.zip using Windows archive utility but the file was corrupt. Not wanting to have to generate the whole project again I manually removed the merged chunk: I opened doc.xml from the project.zip folder and removed the merged chunk (6 in this case) and renumbered the active and next chunk in the header.

The project opened fine and I merged the chunks again, hopefully without corruption!

9

General / 100m Geoid Error - OSGB36 + ODN Height (EPSG::7405)

« on: January 18, 2022, 02:27:23 PM »

Hi, since updating to Metashape 1.8 when I convert from WGS84 to OSGB36 + ODN Height using the installed OSGM15 tif geoid the heights are all exactly 100m too high. When I convert the camera positions in Metashape I get (using one image as an example):

WGS84: 57.67697 -2.735643 179.192; OSGB36: E 356224.48 N 865474.163 H: 228.992

Transforming using the OS Coordinate Converter I get:

WGS84: 57.67697 -2.735643 179.192; OSGB36: E 356224.48 N 865474.163 H: 128.991

Somehow 100m is getting added to the height. I have used the Metashape conversion without issue until I upgraded to 1.8, is this a known issue or bug?

Thanks,

Rory

10

General / Filling In Sea Area

« on: April 25, 2021, 01:49:08 PM »

Hi, we are surveying several coastal sites at low tide for our client, and they have requested that we "fill in" the sea in the orthos. Obviously we won't be able to process the sea areas with Metashape, however is there any way of manually positioning photos of the sea into the ortho inside Metashape, or will this need to be done in an image editor then create a world file? I've attached an image to show what's required.

11

General / Defects in Dense Cloud / DSM

« on: July 16, 2020, 02:55:12 PM »

Hi,

I'm processing a P4RTK mission made up of four flights, PPK processed in RedToolbox. Due to the remote location of the site and difficulty to access on foot there are no checkpoints / GCPs in the project. The client requested 50cm XYZ accuracy, and according to Metashape (latest version just installed) the XY accuracy is 22cm and Y 30cm. I followed my normal workflow which has up to now worked perfectly, however in this instance I'm getting lines and trenches in the dense cloud / DSM that don't exist on the terrain. Any idea what could be causing this? Camera overlap is 75/75 and flying height of 90m (terrain following). I've attached a couple of images from QGIS, one showing the orthomosaic and the other the orthomosaic overlaid with hillshade extracted from the all classes DSM.

12

General / Moonlight for Nvidia Users

« on: March 24, 2020, 04:04:30 PM »

I've been having some issues with TeamViewer and was researching other solution to work on my photogrammetry PC remotely. It's connected to a monitor, however it's located away from my main office area so I access it remotely from my MacBook Pro. Microsoft RDC is no use as it doesn't leverage the GPUs, and TeamViewer is very expensive to license and get rid of the nags.

I came across Moonlight - https://moonlight-stream.org a multi-platform Nvidia Shield client. It only works if you have Nvidia GPUs, and you must have the Nvidia GeForce Experience installed, but the performance is stunning, way ahead of TeamViewer. It's designed for streaming games with full acceleration, but it can stream individual apps or the entire desktop. Setup guide can be found here: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-docs/wiki/Setup-Guide

Well worth a look if you're looking for a remote access solution.

13

Python and Java API / Script to classify ground points and export LAS

« on: February 03, 2020, 08:02:22 PM »

Hi,

I am by no means a scripting expert and struggle with Python! I was wondering if anyone has a script that will classify the ground points in the dense clouds in each chunk, then export each as a LAS file with sequential numbering (1,2... 6). I have three projects with between 6000 and 7000 cameras, each with six processed chunks with the dense clouds. It's quite a laborious process classifying and exporting 18 clouds!

14

General / Memory Not Released after Merging Chunks

« on: January 31, 2020, 05:58:15 PM »

Hi,

After merging the dense clouds in six chunks the memory is not released, subsequent processing often fails with out of memory errors. Restarting Metashape seems to be the only way to clear the memory. Metashape Pro 1.6.1

15

Python and Java API / Remove Duplicates Script Not Working 1.6.1

« on: January 31, 2020, 05:55:17 PM »

Hi,

I use the following script to remove duplicate cameras after merging chunks. Since upgrading to 1.6.1 it fails with the error 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'Path':

Code: [Select]

import Metashape, os

chunk = Metashape.app.document.chunk
print("start")
paths = set()
photos = list()
for camera in list(chunk.cameras):
      if camera.photo.path in paths:
             photos.append(camera)
      else:
             paths.add(camera.photo.path)

chunk.remove(photos)
print("finished. %d duplicates removed" % len(photos))
Any help appreciated!