Topics

1

Feature Requests / Additional optional grids for yz, xz?

« on: September 24, 2021, 12:24:09 AM »

At the moment we have the option of switching the grid off and on. It'd be nice to have the option of switching two or three grids individually off and on, for the three different planes. At the moment I tend to use the grid as an x-y "floor" for orientation, which is great, but then leaves one without anything to fine-tune alignment against for vertical features.   

2

Bug Reports / 1.7.4 Holes in mesh

« on: September 23, 2021, 11:58:18 PM »

Using 1.74 (12950, 13028) with the highest quality settings, and highest quality alignment, I'm getting very wierd behaviour regarding holes.

Previously, where there were gaps in the data (such as a shiny featureless patch on an object, or the upper surface of a window-sill that was not directly visible from the ground), the software would either leave a gap in the surface, or patch over the gap by extrapolating from the surrounding surface. If it left a gap, then this could be simply fixed using Metashape's "fill holes" feature (or the equivalents on other software).

Now, the software interprets any gaps in the data as actual physical holes leading directly into the object, that it attempts to reproduce by creating curved-mouthed tunnels (one for each data-gap) that dive into the object's interior. When there are a number of these tunnels, the software then makes the inner mouths of these tunnels flare open again on the inside and link up to produce a new (invented!) interior surface, at a roughly constant depth from the outer surface.

I'm trying to model some solid stone statues standing on plinths, which have simple, singly-connected surfaces, and the models are turning into partially hollowed-out shells with lots of "wormholes" connecting the outer and inner sets of surfaces together. Lots of extravagant unwanted artificial interior structure that shouldn't be there, doesn't correspond to anything photographed, and which has to be carefully removed before the holes can be filled-in conventionally.

Is there any way to switch this new "clever" behaviour off, and revert to the older way of dealing with gaps?
 

3

Feature Requests / "Protect region" tool?

« on: December 07, 2020, 01:49:58 AM »

... the idea of this would be to have an additional tool that works almost identically to the "select region" tool, but the "selected" points aren't selected for editing ... instead they change colour (to a different colour to "selected for edit" points and can't be selected for editing (until you alter the protect region).

The nice thing about having a protected block is that if you protected a building or a piece of ground, you could then delete a street sign without deleting the building behind it, or look down on the scene and delete the street sign from above without deleting the pavement beneath it.

Programmatically, the new tool would be a copy of the "select" tool, except that it works with a different point-set, and that in case of a point trying to appear in both sets, "protect" overrides "select".

4

Feature Requests / Align/realign bounding box

« on: December 01, 2020, 09:27:57 PM »

At the moment when we create a sparse cloud, the orientation is (obviously) random, and if we want the model aligned with a grid we have to tweak it around a bit. Fair enough.

But then we have to do exactly the same realignment with the bounding box. There are very few situations in which you would want the bounding box NOT aligned with the grid, so it would be nice if there was a way to snap the box alignment to the grid alignment, or to ask for the box alignment to be recalculated in the context of for the given grid alignment. 

It'd reduce the number of fiddly manual 3D alignments from two to one.

5

Feature Requests / Hide Backfaces ("Dollhouse View")

« on: December 01, 2020, 09:18:04 PM »

The ability to hide backfaces (="Dollhouse View") is really important for modelling interiors.

Suppose that you want to produce a public-facing diagram of the layout of rooms and passages and steps (etc.) in an old theatre, or the layout of the interior spaces in an art gallery or a floor of a stately home (or a network of underground access tunnels).
You'll want to use a view "looking down" on the network of rooms/corridors/tunnels from above and outside, in which case everything that you want to show will be obscured by ceilings and obstructing walls.
There needs to be an option to make all the unwanted backfaces automatically invisible.

I've been doing some interiors, and it's a giant pain to have to make a copy of the model and manually cut away all the obstructing detail, only for someone to suggest another view, so you have to go back to the original model and start cutting away stuff again.

This should be automatic. The software is already recognising all the facets that point away from the observer and dealing with those facets differently for display (displaying them darker), all we'd need is a toggle option to just not show them.

I was rather tempted to create a short rotating video of the layout of an interior space, but no way am I going to create two hundred versions of the same model with different parts cut away for every frame!