Messages

16

General / Upgrading for speed

« on: June 17, 2016, 06:45:53 PM »

It’s clear from my growing experience that I need to upgrade my system to get processing results in a reasonable amount of time. I’m currently using a windows system with an i5-4690k @ 3.5ghz with 16gb of memory and an AMD R9 290 graphics card. Increasing memory to 32gb is a must, but which would give me a better performance boost, adding another graphics card or replacing the CPU with say an i7-4790 4ghz.

17

General / Manual Photo Alignment and adding photos

« on: June 17, 2016, 06:28:14 PM »

I read in an earlier post somewhere that excluding detail shots from the initial alignment and development of the sparse point cloud would speed up the process and sometimes unblock a choke point in the processing and that once the sparse cloud had been developed the detail shots could be added in using manual alignment. I tried this but the manual alignment (align selected camera) wouldn't work. Reading further I found a post by Alexey that explained that manual alignment looks for previous match points so therefor only works if the manually aligned images were part of the original set.

Is there a way to add and align images to the original sparse point cloud?

If the images are added after the sparse point cloud is created and I go straight to dense point cloud development will the new images be incorporated?

18

General / Re: No time estimate for filtering depth maps?

« on: June 10, 2016, 05:21:58 PM »

Thank you mschroyer and Alexey this directly addresses my problems as well, but Alexey, you say use the overview photos to do the camera alignment then add in the detailed photos afterward? That brings up a question I had: When you start photo alignment your given a choice of quality, highest to lowest. When you manually add in photos later there is no quality option. Does that mean that new photos are aligned with maximum precision?

19

General / Re: No time estimate for filtering depth maps?

« on: June 08, 2016, 08:39:04 PM »

I too had problem when trying to do an ultra high density model of a sculpture that rendered a very successful high density model. It ran for three days and at first didn't show a time estimate. It sat on 10% for about a day then went up to 11% and showed a time estimate it was like 173.35 hours. A day later it showed 12%. At that point I aborted the run.

I don't know if its just the amount of processing required, the amount of memory available or what , but it is frustrating. My real work doesn't start until the model is created. So I'm working with the high density model, which took around 22 hours for photo alignment and about another day for dense cloud generation. 500 pictures at HD resolution.

20

General / Re: Agisoft to Unity3D - dull texture

« on: June 08, 2016, 08:27:01 PM »

I'm not familiar with Unity but I was unhappy with the textures that were exported to 3ds Max in the  *.obj file. I solved the problem by increasing the texture count from 1 to 2. This gives a higher resolution map for each segment. Hope this helps

21

General / Re: Two noob questions

« on: June 08, 2016, 08:19:29 PM »

Thank you James,

That does exactly what I needed. It was the three step process and using the space bar to "set " the new orientation that I was missing. Life just became much easier

22

General / Re: Two noob questions

« on: June 07, 2016, 09:29:06 PM »

Thanks Alexy,

 I understand that I can rotate the object relative to the screen but the trackball rotates as well and remains at its original orientation to the scanned object. It can be inconvenient when editing the mesh or deleting points because a vertical or horizontal rotation of the object to say get it level to the screen may require individual adjustments on all three axis of the track ball that is neither lined up with the object or the screen and then still not be very precise.

What would be nice is to be able to align the object with the screen then press a button that would also align the trackball to the screen. Then local x,y, and z axis would be in alignment.

That's probably a lot easier said than done though.

and thank you for the confirmation on the masks

23

General / Two noob questions

« on: June 07, 2016, 09:07:45 PM »

Just starting out with detailed modeling:

1. When I load and align my images they are inevitably grossly skewed/rotated from the trackball/local coordinate system. Its easy enough to translate the model to center on the trackball but I haven't figured how to align the trackball axis with the preferred model axis. What am I missing?

2. For photo alignment, I want to use all the capture points in the images. Once a preliminary model is created I want to use it to create a mask and use that mask to regenerate (hopefully) a better dense point cloud. There is a button for using or not using masks on the photo alignment but there is no equivalent switch on the dense cloud generation. Does the program assume that if masks exist then it will use them?

Thanks

24

General / Re: Nikon D600 or D700

« on: May 20, 2016, 04:21:27 PM »

Thanks for your comments JMR. I agree and will be using the D600. I'll still be shooting at a slow shutter speed. WRT your comment about anything below ISO800 I'm not so sure. The attached were made using a NIkon D5000 and a small sample set of pics but they show noticeable impact on the model as a function of ISO

25

General / Nikon D600 or D700

« on: May 17, 2016, 09:46:12 PM »

Is it better to have more pixels or higher quality pixels? I have a project to create a model of a statue that must be shot in low light conditions. I have a choice of a Nikon D600 at 24 megapixels or a Nikon D700 at 12 megapixels. Both have the same size Nikon FX CMOS so one would expect less noise on the D700 at the same aperture and shutter speeds. I did a test earlier (on a different camera) and was surprised at the impact that noise from different ISO settings has on the final model just going from ISO 100 to ISO 200. Of course there, the pixels were all the same size whereas here I have a choice of more pixels or less. I'm hoping that someone more familiar with how the pixel data is interpreted can give me some insight.

26

General / Masks and Dense Cloud Creation

« on: April 10, 2016, 12:48:11 AM »

Hi,
New to Photoscan (on trial), so far getting great results. My question is, do masks used for the dense cloud have to be prepared for all photos or can a representative photo that contains the area to be masked be used, and it will be carried through out the model? I don't particularly want to prepare a mask for each photo when there are hundreds involved.
Thanks in advance