Messages

1

General / Source Mesh for Reduce Overlap

« on: December 15, 2021, 06:46:40 PM »

How is the mesh used to calculate which images should be disabled for Reduce Overlap?  If I build a mesh from sparse cloud and reduce overlap, more photos are disabled than if I reduce overlap using a mesh built from low quality depth maps. 

I'm trying to figure out how much I can reduce overlap without getting holes.    Is the calculation more accurate using depth maps?  Does the quality of the depth maps matter?  If I reduce overlap, then build the model again with low quality depth maps, would that give me a heads up about where I will have holes in the final mesh?

2

General / Re: easy scan

« on: October 10, 2011, 10:30:43 PM »

The Quick Select tool in Photoshop is very fast.  You mostly only need to swipe a little bit of the background and it will figure out where all the edges are.  You can use Actions to create a macro to turn the selection into an alpha channel, save, then close. 

When you shoot your object, try to make the background as plain as possible, and a color that is very different.  Something like a neon green poster board will make masking easy.   You don't need to mask the turntable, only the parts of the image that don't turn with the object.

When masking, make sure that feathering and anti-aliasing are turned off.  You want the edges to be as sharp as possible.  You don't want photoscan trying to work with pixels that have been altered in any way.

3

Feature Requests / Re: Pause/Save/Resume Later

« on: August 24, 2011, 07:02:47 AM »

 There is a pause, but it doesn't let you save, quit and come back.  Also, it doesn't even seem to let go of the CPU and Memory, or if it does, it takes to long to be useful.  When I pause, I want to get my CPU back to do other things.

It may be similar to cancel.  I used to think cancel didn't work, but now I think you just have to go away for 30 minutes and hope it is done canceling when you come back.

4

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.3 pre-release

« on: July 29, 2011, 05:58:49 AM »

Is there a change log for this pre-release?

I've seen the progress screen in the batch window, and appreciate the addition.

5

Feature Requests / Re: Flag images for texturing.

« on: July 24, 2011, 06:49:59 PM »

I'm curious about the use of black and white images for reconstruction.    Does it make feature detection harder because color can't be used to differentiate one point from another?  Or does it reduce error because there is no confusion caused by variations in color between frames?

6

Bug Reports / Re: Geometry type 'smooth' never finishes the job

« on: July 21, 2011, 08:09:26 PM »

Were you able to process the same datasets on earlier builds?  I run into the same problem a lot, always at 46%.  Sometimes when I run out of memory, there is an error but it usually happens as you describe.  The cancel button doesn't work so the only option is to force quit.

On 4GB of ram I can manage about 3-6 10MP images at high.  With 8GB ram I can do a few more.  At medium I might be able to push it to 80 photos, but beyond that I stand a good chance of running into this problem.  Unfortunately running out of memory on large sets means it has already taken hours to get to that point, making it all wasted time.

I wish there was a way to save the work from reconstructing depth, and then somehow limit the mesh generation.  Kind of a "pre-decimation"  Then if it crashes, we can dial down the face count and jump straight back to mesh generation without redoing the depth reconstructing.  I have no idea if that is even possible.

7

Feature Requests / Re: resume batch.

« on: July 07, 2011, 07:00:02 AM »

Do each of your chunks only have two photos?  Are you doing it this way so that movement doesn't affect the creation of the geometry? 

8

Bug Reports / Re: Chunks Alignment don?t work

« on: July 03, 2011, 07:21:16 PM »

Watching the output I'm finding that projecting points shows 99% complete after about an hour of work, when it actually has 12 hours to go.  It seems to reach 99% at the "adding part" stage. 

9

Feature Requests / Chunk visibility

« on: July 02, 2011, 06:01:56 PM »

I would like a button to switch visibility of a chunk on and off.  I can see the chunk I am on, or all aligned, but it would be more useful to be able to see all aligned chunks and then switch chunks on and off. 

Also if you add manual alignment of chunks, an opacity control would be helpful too.

A completely unrelated request-  Would it be possible to allow the output view to be scrolled during processing?  Perhaps by breaking it into a separate window or writing to a log file?  Also timestamps with the events.

10

General / Re: CPU Usage Drop

« on: June 30, 2011, 11:46:37 PM »

I'll try with the lower setting, though I am already doing medium.  I haven't been successful doing anything at high with 10MP on 8GB.   I know that mesh generation isn't mulithreaded, and I can see the one core being used on the Mac, but the PC always shows all 3 cores running full.  I don't know if it is a quirk with task manager or what.

I wish there was a good way to predict memory use.  I want the chunks to be as big as possible, and not limit the number of possible photos that might contain a point.  Every time I guess wrong, it's a few hours lost.

11

General / Re: Face counter number

« on: June 30, 2011, 10:16:17 PM »

My understanding is that the face count you set in the Build Geometry dialog is the target for decimation after the mesh has been built.  It will always create 13 million faces for your photo set.  You can set it 500k, and it will do the decimation after the build, or you can set it to 0 and do the decimation yourself with Tools/Decimate with the same result.

If you prefer your mesh to be a certain size, like 500k faces, you can take this approach- Set the target to 0 so you get a 13 million face mesh.  Delete the geometry you don't need and then decimate.  That way your 500k faces are spread over only the area you want, giving more detail.  If you set the target in the Build Geometry dialog, the 500k faces will be used for the entire raw mesh.

12

General / CPU Usage Drop

« on: June 30, 2011, 06:50:05 PM »

Often while generating a mesh on smooth, CPU usage will drop to 1-5%, and the process will never complete (maybe if I left it for days it would).  I thought it was caused by running out of memory, but I've seen it happen near the limit, but not exceeding.  Memory usage still varies, and there is an occasional spike, or one core might run at 20% for a little bit and drop off again.

This always seems to happen at 46% completion.  I dread 46%, and if it makes the jump to 82% I know the mesh will most likely complete.

It is currently doing it on a chunk with 69 10MP photos on a 3 core AMD with 8GB of RAM in Win7.  It's done the same thing on my work computer, with is a MacPro with 8 cores and 8GB RAM.

13

Bug Reports / Re: Chunks Alignment don?t work

« on: June 30, 2011, 01:35:40 AM »

There are around 18 chunks with about 700 photos total.  It's happened on High Medium and Low quality, and never seemed to be reaching the limit of RAM.  I've done 15 successfully and ran into the problem after I added a few more.  I'm going back and aligning one additional chunk at a time, but that is a very slow process since they all have to align each time.  That's why I requested Progressive Alignment.  I think the problem might be a specific chunk, and it would be a lot easier to test if I can lock the orientation of the chunks that were already done.

Would the size of the mesh affect it?  Most of the chunks had been edited and decimated, but some of the new ones were still at a much higher resolution.  I also tried disabling half of the photos in each chunk but that didn't seem to help either.

One time when it was stuck at 99%, I canceled and everything was aligned anyway.  However that has only happened once.  Cancel never works on a stalled process, it always has to be forced quit.

I know it's a lot chunks and a lot of photos.  I am modeling my house, and found that keep detail sharp and noise low I need to photograph it fairly close, especially to create enough detail in flat painted areas.  My ultimate goal is to create a model I can use to get a colored 3D print.

14

Feature Requests / Additional batch options

« on: June 27, 2011, 06:08:20 PM »

I would like to see Align Chunks and Merge Chunks added to the batch.  And in the Merge Chunks dialog an option to generate a texture for the new merged mesh.

I would also like an option to autosave after a long processes that are started outside of batch.

15

Bug Reports / Can't Cancel

« on: June 27, 2011, 05:06:28 PM »

For many processes, PS won't cancel if it has reached a challenging situation.  In particular, if it has run out of memory while building a mesh. It may not have completely run out of memory, but it is apparently running on cache, using 5% processor.   The "Are you sure?" dialog will come up and the Cancel button greys out, but PS keeps going.  You can even pause and resume, but it won't ever actually stop, leaving no option but to force quit. 

The same thing happens when aligning chunks and it gets stuck at 99% projecting points.