Messages

1

General / Re: Turntable troubles

« on: July 20, 2016, 08:34:09 AM »

What an amazing difference!

And if I knew what it was, I'd say, "That's a fine looking ......."  But I'm embarrassed to say that my best guess is that it's an under-water fossil.   


So, what is it?

Lol, your guess is as good as mine, but yeah it's some sort of fossil, I'm happy with the way it turned out.

I see what you mean about the masking.  Without it, everything just falls apart, huh?  And I agree: masking is pretty tedious but why don't you try doing rough masks in Photoscan, on each photo.  Just draw a marquee around your model on each shot - it doesn't even have to be close to exact. 

Alternately, for each of your camera angles, shoot a "blank plate", that is, take the model off the lazy susan and shoot the blank background.  Do this for every angle that you shoot.  Not every shot, but every angle.  You shot 2 angles, so you'd have 2 blank plates.  You can tell Photoscan to create masks based on your shots and the blank plates.  It does an internal difference matte.

I tried shooting the black backing of my photo tent by for some reason my camera won't focus and take the shot, guess there's nothing to focus in on and it won't snap the shot even in manual mode. Any suggestions?

Just pull the RAW files into Camera Raw, select one of them and in the controls on the right move the "Exposure" slider while holding the ALT key.  Anything in the image that is over-exposed will show up as red, yellow or green (I think, I might have those colors wrong) while the rest of the image will go black.  This is a very handy, little-known-about tool in Camera Raw.  If they are over-exposed, just slide the exposure down a little.  Then, click on "Select All" in the top left-hand corner and then "Synchronize", which will apply that exposure correction to all of your images.

Is Camera Raw an external program or something within Photoscan?

The background is a little bright, but I don't think you should worry about that too much. 

I'm going to work on getting better lighting so I can make it as flat as possible so Photoscan can pick up as much detail as possible.

The model itself is fine.

I get what you're saying about just wanting to get back to this and not wait until the weekend.  Sounds like you've got the bug...

Haha I totally do have the bug. I went around my town last night and snapped a few shots with my cellphone and practiced getting the workflow down and even with some rough pictures I got some ok looking models. With more practice in a controlled environments (instead of me looking over my shoulder at Macy's to keep an eye out for any security guards looking for someone circling a mannequin like a crazy person) I'm sure I can get some really good looking models. 

2

General / Re: New to photogrammetry - 3d scanner related question

« on: July 20, 2016, 08:02:12 AM »

I was wondering the same thing, I'm looking into maybe buying a David SLS2 3D Scanner and I was wondering if Photoscan can use the point cloud data from it to generate a mesh and texture thereafter. Anyone have any thoughts on that or experience?

3

General / Re: Turntable troubles

« on: July 15, 2016, 05:50:30 AM »

Pictures 3 & 4

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General / Re: Turntable troubles

« on: July 15, 2016, 05:49:29 AM »

Well I couldn't wait until the weekend because I'm really eager to get this up and running with my VR project so Ileft work early and came home to re-shoot with the suggestions made and WOW did it make a huge difference!

I marked off on my turntable 10 degree increments and show 2 full rotations of my little statue at 2 different heights in RAW (and then converted them to TIFF) and at first I ran into the same problem as before (the point cloud looked more like a shotgun blast than a rough model Pic #1) but I realized I didn't mask my object so I went in masked each of my photos by hand (I'll still need to work out a better batch process to expedite the process but this is ok for now) and that massively improved the point cloud. I did the estimated image quality and this time around I got mostly .65-.80's so I cleared off the .55's and below, after that it was all pretty straight forward I did batch process to align the photos and build the mesh and then put on the texture. (Picture 2)

I'm going to have to test these models in my Oculus Rift to see how many face it can support smoothly, at first my object has 200,000 but then I decimated it to 100,000 (Picture 3) I'm aiming to have something down in the 15,000 range for performance but to still look appealing. Is it possible to have a low poly count but with a very crisp texture or does it all end up looking wonky?

Also Picture 4 is what my shots mainly looked like, I feel like it was little on the bright side even though it gave a pretty good result. Would lowering the brightness help?

And what would be the  best way to fill in holes, I tried using the tool but it didn't seem to catch.

Thanks again for everything! It finally feels like I'm starting to get the hang of this 

5

General / Re: Turntable troubles

« on: July 14, 2016, 09:25:16 AM »

@ekbmuts
Hey Jon

Brilliant! Thank you so much!

I'm actually using a Sony A-55 which when set to JPEG&Raw gives me .ARW files. I'll search around for a converter to swtich them to .TIFF as I've seen a lot of good mode apparently use that format.

I'm going to do a reshoot with the new settings (ISO 100, F11, RAW) and work on getting white balancing right with this camera and see what results I can come up with. It looks like maybe one the of the reasons the initial model came out like crap was because my images weren't crisp enough, I followed your recommendation to check the 'image quality' and most (if not all) were running between .24-.56 so that needs some work to get it on point. I think part of it had to do with me shooting on the turntable, you are right in your guess that I was photographing while it was in motion, since then I've marked of 10 degree increments on the turntables face with a protractor to measure things out.

Also really appreciate you pointing me in the direction of that tutorial series, between the masking and the merging/editing chunks a lot of fog was lifted on next steps to take and the functions of the software that I have yet to get into and I've cued up An Evening with Alex Alvarez, I'm looking forward to checking it out.

@Kiesel
And thank you as well Karsten!

You bring up a great point which completely slipped my mind, I remembered reading up on the manual and recall how the tutorials said that Photoscan doesn't do textureless surfaces that well. I was thinking that somehow it would be able to recognize that it is a simple geometric object and use the marking as reference points and apply the paintings as a texture but I guess not. Welp you live and you learn! Also thanks a bunch for posting that link to the large scale sheet as well, between yours and @ekbmuts I think I'm in a good position to do larger scans...later down the line when I have some experience under my belt of course.


I'll be sure to report back in at the end of this week with a status update on the new scans. Thanks again for all your help everyone 

6

General / Re: Turntable troubles

« on: July 13, 2016, 08:19:37 AM »

Hey Jon,  really appreciate this, thanks.

1.  Are you shooting RAW?
I'm shooting JPEG & Raw, but right now I'm using the JPEG's in Agisoft

2.  Are all your shots in-focus?  Are you looking through the viewfinder and confirming that your shots are in-focus before you shoot?
There were a few that were a touch blurry, what would you recommend in order for the images to remain sharp while using a turn table?

3.  What's your ISO set at?

100

4.  What's your aperture/f-stop?
f5.6

5.  Is the model in the center of your turntable or off to one side?  I'm wondering because from your camera positions it looks like Agisoft is not getting it or something?
It's in the center of my turntable, I've placed a little dot right in the middle of it after measuring the diameter out.

6.  I don't think you're taking too many photos.  I'm certain of that.
Great, one I get a feel for it, I want to then start doing shots at different angles with 30-45 shots/angle. Is that reasonable?

7.  Did you filter your photos (right-click on one of your images in the "Photos" pane and select "Estimate Image Quality...") and disable those that Photoscan returned a below-0.5 report for?  I find that sometimes helps.
I've right clicked on the images and have done estimate and it looks like it runs through it but I don't see where the results are.

8.  You could try making your own masks in Photoscan.  They don't have to be exact.  Just draw a rough marquee around the robot in each of your photos and see how that does.  I have found that just a rough mask works fine.
Can I apply a mask in bulk to the rest of the photos in Agisoft or do I have to do that externally?

My next round of photos will be food focused, if that should make a differences in what I need to do coming up.

7

General / Turntable troubles

« on: July 10, 2016, 06:26:24 AM »

Hi Agisoft Community,

I'm hoping you may be able to assist me. I've been able to get some rough models generated when I walked around the subject but because the project I'm developing demands higher quality models to be imported into VR headsets I decided to invest in a photography turntable, however the results have been less than stellar. At first a lot of my photos looked as if they were all coming from a single point and not as if the camera rotated around the subject (like a turntable is supposed to mimic). I've been working off of this tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_F-b2hxP_o

So I used the "From Background" method of masking and Agisoft got most of the background but I had to manual go in and add the missing parts of the selection till I got something a little tighter (see images). This got my a better result (it actually looks more like the little robot I'm shooting) but it's still pretty garbled. I'm using a light tent and trying to keep the lighting as flat as possible and taking multiple shots but I'm still not getting the model to look the way I need it to look.

Am I missing something? Or is there some setting I need to put Agisoft on to process turntable photos? Is it because I'm taking too many photos (last scan of this robot was 59 photos)

I using a 16 mp Sony a55 DSLR Camera with 18-55mm lens
Light tent
Arqsping Turntable
Remote cable shutter trigger set at 1 photo/sec
Shooting all images in JPG & RAw

Once I have these models I was wondering  what the best way is to get a HD model without it killing my computer. Low poly model with HD texture? I need it to be able to operate withing a VR headset which that in and of itself is a big challenge.

Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated!