Topics

1

Feature Requests / Masking what I "do" want instead of what I "don't want"

« on: February 15, 2024, 05:46:00 PM »

I just the masks for pretty much everything I scan.  However, it seems backwards to me because I have to select all of the areas that I do *not* want in my final model instead of just what I *do* want.  It's much harder to exclude all of those extra areas in the photos than it is to just find one good reference photo and say "here's the area I want, forget about everything else".

So, it would be great if the Masks feature would allow for this.

2

Bug Reports / Mac NSView error message

« on: March 07, 2022, 06:00:02 PM »

I just got an error message at the end of a Batch that I've never seen before:

Back buffer dpr of 1 doesn't match <_NSViewBackingLayer...

It looks like a MacOS NSView error dealing with the window system.  Didn't affect the results of the batch, but I figured I'd report it.

3

Bug Reports / Console log stops updating after Minimize -> de-Minimize

« on: February 05, 2022, 12:10:30 AM »

Here's a very minor bug in 1.8.1.  If I Click the Minimize button in the progress window it makes the main window go away.  But if I then bring the main window back, the Console log still stop updating in that window.  It continues to update in the Progress window, but not the main workspace window.  It's just frozen where it was when I minimized the window.

Additionally, when processing is complete nothing in the main window responds.  I cannot select a chunk or the finished model or anything.  In other words:  minimizing the main window and then un-minimizaing it during processing causes it to become non-responsive.

This is on a MacBook Pro M1 Max.

4

Bug Reports / Metashape stops when Mac sleeps

« on: December 18, 2021, 06:48:16 PM »

A problem I have with 1.7.3 (the version I use most of the time) is that the application doesn't prevent the Mac from going to sleep while Metashape is working.  So, if I run a Batch and leave the room I often come back to find my Mac asleep.  When I wake it I see that Metashape has stopped where it was when the Mac dozed off (usually after 15 minutes since that's what I have it set to in System Settings).  Metashape then continues once the Mac is awake. 

This can be prevented with a single like of code:

UpdateSystemActivity(OverallAct);

I don't know if the later versions of Metashape already do this, but if not, that line of code needs to be called every ~30 seconds from a NSTimer function.  This will prevent the Mac from going to sleep while Metashape is working.

5

Bug Reports / Still experiencing random system freezes on Mac

« on: November 22, 2021, 09:40:20 PM »

A while back I reported a problem I was having on my old 2013 Mac Pro where Metashape would cause my entire Mac to completely freeze and I had to do a force reboot.  This would happen about 60% of the time it would do a depth map generation pass.  I was told that it was probably because of the low VRAM on that machine, so I should try reducing the tile size to 512 with a parameter tweak and see what happened.  That reduced the system freezing to about 5% which was a much more tolerable occurrence.

Now, on my new MacBook Pro with 64Gigs of RAM/VRAM I still get the occasional system freezes during Depth Map generation.  I'm back to using the default 2048 tile size, but it still happens around 1 in 40 times, so rare, but still every week.

This is with Metashape 1.7.3.  I can't use the later versions because 1.7.3 is the last version that builds meshes from Depth Maps properly.

-Brian

6

Bug Reports / VK Error when creating textures in 1.8

« on: November 02, 2021, 04:37:21 AM »

Testing out the 1.8 beta on my new MacBook Pro M1 Max, and while everything worked fine I did see this error in the log output right at the end when it was generating the texture:

2021-11-01 20:24:31 Failed to initialize context. Reason: VK Error : VkResult is "ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED" at line 66

It generated the texture just fine.  It seems to give this same error on both Orthophoto and Keep UV modes.  I didn't try any others to see if it does that for all of them.  However, running the exact same project on my old Mac Pro did not yield that error.  Here is more the log:

2021-11-01 20:24:31 Found 1 GPUs in 2.1e-05 sec (OpenCL: 1.7e-05 sec)
2021-11-01 20:24:31 Using device: Apple M1 Max, 32 compute units, 43690 MB global memory, OpenCL 1.2
2021-11-01 20:24:31   driver version: 1.2 1.0, platform version: OpenCL 1.2 (Oct  1 2021 19:40:58)
2021-11-01 20:24:31   max work group size 256
2021-11-01 20:24:31   max work item sizes [256, 256, 256]
2021-11-01 20:24:31   max mem alloc size 8192 MB
2021-11-01 20:24:31 Failed to initialize context. Reason: VK Error : VkResult is "ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED" at line 66
2021-11-01 20:24:31 Done "load_model" in 0
2021-11-01 20:24:31 blending textures... ************************************ done in 4.91948 sec
2021-11-01 20:24:36 postprocessing atlas... done in 6.45553 sec
2021-11-01 20:24:43 Finished processing in 12.99 sec (exit code 1)

7

General / Disappointing performance results on new MacBook Pro M1 Max

« on: November 02, 2021, 12:12:09 AM »

My new MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip and 32 GPU cores + 64gigs of RAM arrived today.  I ran a quick test with the Metashape 1.8 beta that runs natively on Apple Silicon and it's actually no faster, and possibly a tiny bit slower than on my old 2013 Mac Pro.

Even though my MacBook Pro has 32 GPU cores, Metashape is only using 1 of them.  It used both on my old Mac Pro, and that seems to be why the Mac Pro is faster.  When I go into the Preferences it shows "Apple M1 Max (32 compute units)".  Maybe I'm just confused about what I bought, but I assumed 32-GPU cores meant Metashape would use all 32 of those like it used the 2 on the old Mac Pro.  Instead, it's recognizing just 1 GPU, but with 32 compute units.  I'm not sure what the difference is.

-Brian

8

General / New MacBook Pro with M1 Max chip

« on: October 18, 2021, 09:19:24 PM »

Well, I just ordered a new MacBook Pro totally loaded with the M1 Max chip.  64 gig RAM and 32 GPU cores.  I don't know if Metashape will support all 32 cores, but I sure hope it does because I suspect it'll speed up processing about 20x over my old Mac with just 2 GPU cores that I've been using.

-Brian

9

General / Mesh from Dense Point Cloud vs. Depth Maps

« on: October 05, 2021, 02:30:43 AM »

For the last 9 months that I've been using Metashape I have been generating my Meshes from the Depth Maps, mainly because it's faster.  However, something broke with 1.7.4 and 1.8 beta which is causing all sorts of blobs to appear on the underside of my meshes when generated from Depth Maps.  The blobs are impossible to remove, thus, leaving me with unusable meshes.

However, if I generate my meshes from a Dense Point Cloud everything is perfectly fine.  So, for now I'm staying with v1.7.3 so I can use the Depth Maps, but inevitably I will need to upgrade and will therefore be forced to use Dense Point Clouds.

So, my question is this:  generally speaking which method gives the most accurate and detailed results?  I've read conflicting information on the topic.  Some people say Depth Maps are best in every way while others say Dense Clouds are better for details despite the extra noise.  What say you guys?

-Brian

10

General / How to reset Warning Messages?

« on: October 03, 2021, 03:46:43 AM »

I'm wondering if it is possible to turn back on those warning messages that had the "Do not show again" check box.  I did that on a warning that I actually need to have appear, but I cannot seem to figure out where I can re-enable it.

Thanks

11

General / How to run a .py Script

« on: September 29, 2021, 04:25:24 AM »

I keep seeing references to the ability to run a Python script from the Tools menu or from a Batch, but I'm not seeing it.  Is this feature not available in the Standard version of Metashape?

Thanks,

-Brian

12

Bug Reports / 1.8 beta crashing a lot

« on: September 23, 2021, 06:36:29 PM »

I've had the 1.8 pre-release crash on my about 50% of the time when I've tried building a mesh using the depth map method.  I've been out of the room each time it crashed, so when I walk in I just see the crash reporter dialog.  Therefore, I don't know if it crashed during depth map generation, after it, during mesh building, or what.  But I submitted the crash each time.

It also still locks up my Mac Pro sometimes during depth map generation, but all versions of MetaShape have been doing that, so nothing new there.

-Brian

13

Bug Reports / 1.8 beta Cannot Read existing Batch Files

« on: September 22, 2021, 03:16:18 PM »

I'm not sure if this is a bug or just that 1.8 cannot read old batch .xml files by design, but when I attempt to load my existing batch files I get this error message:

14

General / What’s the maximum number of GPUs supported?

« on: September 16, 2021, 04:43:52 PM »

I’m just curious, but what is the maximum number (if any) of GPU cores that Metashape will use?  My lowly old Mac Pro only has 2 cores and it obviously uses both of those, but the new MacBook Pro is rumored to have up to 32 cores, so I’m wondering if Metashape will use all of them to really speed things up.

Thanks

15

General / How does Metashape determine the orientation of the final model?

« on: September 02, 2021, 06:50:46 PM »

I use Metashape for creating 3D scans of small objects that I photograph on a table.  It works incredibly well, but the orientation of the final model is always some random, crazy orientation.  Obviously, the software doesn't know which way is "up" from a set of photos, but I'm wondering what criteria it used to determine the orientation?  Is there anything I can do to help it come out so that the tabletop, ground, or whatever is actually flat and parallel with the X/Y plane?

-Brian