Messages

1

General / Re: Point Cloud Generation - Very Slow after 74% with Low CPU

« on: November 28, 2025, 11:03:30 AM »

Yes this step is single threaded.

You could try the newest test version, I think there are some improvements there.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks for the info. It completed after 26 hours so all good. I’ll maybe try the pre release version on the next survey.

Cheers,

Rory

2

General / Point Cloud Generation - Very Slow after 74% with Low CPU

« on: November 27, 2025, 07:56:46 PM »

Hi, This is not really a problem but I am curious to know what's going on. I am working with a 9,210 20MP image dataset. Currently generating the point cloud, the depth maps took about six hours to build, it is now generating the point cloud but at 74% it slowed down with only about 5% CPU utilisation. The total time currently is 22 hours 21 minutes and it is estimating around four hours to complete, although it has taken four hours to go from five hours remaining to four hours remaining! Workstation spec is an Intel i9 10980XE 18 core with 256GB RAM and 2 x GF RTX 3070 Ti. Images are on a fast NVMe SSD.

The images are from two drones, a Matrice 4E and a Mavic 3E. Alignment was done on high, and I didn't use the fit additional corrections option when optimising cameras which can slow things down. Point cloud generation was set to high with aggressive filtering, and both calculate point colours and point confidence enabled.

I'm curious to know why it reaches a point where there is little CPU use? Is there anything I can do to speed things up in the future? I regularly process datasets of around 3,000 to 5,000 images and it seems to use a lot more CPU to almost the end of point cloud generation.

TIA Rory

3

General / Mac M4 Max vs Win 11 Intel i9 24 Core 2 x 3080Ti

« on: August 21, 2025, 05:56:46 PM »

I've been evaluating Metashape on my Mac Studio M4 Max with 128GB RAM and 40 core GPU. I normally use it on a dedicated Win 11 workstation with 24 core i9 processor, 256GB RAM and 2 x 3080Ti GPUs. The Mac is actually faster for depth maps and building the point cloud, but it is painfully slow matching images. As an example, a 588 image 4 channel MS dataset (2,352 images total) takes 10 minutes to match and 19 minutes to align on the Windows workstation, compared to over 2 hours to match, and 16 minutes to align on the Mac. Both were set to the same alignment and matching settings, generic and reference pre-selection, 40,000 key points and 4,000 tie points, high quality,

I assume Metashape is not leveraging the GPU for matching on the Mac, but if that's the case why does it use it when building the depth maps? I've just finished processing a slightly larger 697 image MS dataset on the Mac, it generated the depth maps in high quality mild filtering in just 10 minutes with high GPU use, and the point cloud took just 17 minutes.

I was about to purchase another Metashape Pro license for the Mac, but the poor matching performance has put me off for the moment.

4

General / Re: Multispectral Orthomosaic export

« on: August 21, 2025, 05:32:01 PM »

I work with M3M datasets pretty much all the time. To export the individual bands set the raster transform to the band you want then export as Index Value in the raster transform dialog. I don't change any other settings, once you have the raw values you can manipulate them in GIS for visualisation or raster calculations. In Metashape the individual bands may look like a single colour with little or no detail, this is what you get if you export as Index Color rather than value.

5

General / Re: Refine Mesh - 4 days!

« on: July 30, 2025, 11:45:06 PM »

Hi Alexey,

Thanks for your quick response. I have sorted the problem, turns out that the 24M face model had somehow become the default rather than the 5M face decimated one. I also reduced the iterations to 8 and it's now estimating two hours instead of four days!

I built it from the point cloud as the region within the bounding box is quite large compared to the area required for the model. I duplicated the point cloud clipping it to the area of interest. It also allows me to remove points with low confidence in the point cloud.

Cheers,

Rory

6

General / Refine Mesh - 4 days!

« on: July 30, 2025, 10:38:54 PM »

I have a model of a High Voltage DC switching station, it was built from the point cloud in high quality and decimated from 24M to 5M faces. There is a lot of detail on the building such as railings around the roof which are not great, so I'm trying the refine model option with high quality and 10 iterations. It started this morning at 11 hours, but now it's at 12% with over four days to go. The images are 45MP from a P1 camera. I can't tie the workstation up for the length of time so would there be any quality benefit using just two or three iterations rather than 10?

Workstation is fairly high spec with a 12th gen Intel i9 24 cores, 2 x RTX3080ti and 256GB RAM.

TIA,

Rory

7

General / Re: Is Licensing Fixed?

« on: August 23, 2022, 04:39:06 PM »

Hello Rory,

Online activation servers are working since mid March already. Since then no "blackouts" have been observed.

If you face any issues with the older license deactivation, please contact support@agisoft.com for assistance.

Thanks Alexey, I have deactivated the old workstation and will activate it on the new one as soon as this ortho has finished.

8

General / Is Licensing Fixed?

« on: August 22, 2022, 07:49:53 PM »

We bought our new workstation at the same time there were licensing issues so have been using the spare license up until now. Our old workstation is about to be sold so I need to deactivate the license on it and activate it on the new one. Can you confirm the licensing issues are fixed?

Thanks, Rory

9

General / Re: Swapping Images After Alignment

« on: August 18, 2022, 01:38:41 AM »

Thanks for the replies. I can confirm it works perfectly!

10

General / Swapping Images After Alignment

« on: August 16, 2022, 10:09:36 PM »

Hi, I am working on a 750 hectare 7900 image RTK drone survey made up of 33 survey segments of around 240 images. After alignment there are some notably darker sections where the ev fell below 0.0, roughly one or two stops underexposed. Rather than correct the exposure and realign from scratch, is it possible to simply swap out the underexposed images with the corrected ones? Obviously I would ensure the folder and filenames are identical.

If I use Lightroom to correct exposure it will remove most of the EXIF and XMP data, however now that alignment is complete does it need these data?

Thanks,

Rory

11

General / Re: Problem with Network Paths

« on: March 12, 2022, 11:01:49 PM »

All good now, I used UNC paths for everything including opening the project. Instead of 30 hours it’s estimating 13 for the ortho generation. Thanks!

12

General / Re: Problem with Network Paths

« on: March 12, 2022, 09:31:37 PM »

Hi Alexey,

I now have workstation 2 working, but workstation 1 throws up this error:

2022-03-12 18:05:36 [192.168.1.186:63210] failed #0 BuildOrthomosaic.rectifyImages (1/100): Can't open file: The system cannot find the path specified (3): O:/Metashape/MWOW/Full Site.psx

The path is correct (it's now on the network) so not sure what is going on!

13

General / Re: Problem with Network Paths

« on: March 12, 2022, 07:18:20 PM »

I have a Synology NAS so I'll try copying the project over so the paths will be the same for all nodes.

14

General / Problem with Network Paths

« on: March 12, 2022, 06:32:01 PM »

Hi,

I am trying out network processing but having a major issue with paths. The project is on the D drive of workstation 1, this drive is mapped as the O drive on workstation 2. No matter what I try workstation 2 always has a path error. I run the node using this command:

"C:\Program Files\Agisoft\Metashape Pro\"metashape --node --host 192.168.1.114 --root "O:\Metashape Projects\MWOW"

As soon as I start processing I get this error:

2022-03-12 15:14:29 [192.168.1.114:50713] failed #8 BuildOrthomosaic: Can't open file: The system cannot find the path specified (3): O:/Metashape Projects/MWOW/Full Site.psx

The path in the GUI of workstation 1 is D:\Metashape Projects\

Does the project have to be on a network drive for this to work?

Also, when using a network node to process, do both machines process or do I need to start a node on workstation 1?

Thanks,

Rory

15

General / Re: Quick_Layout.py

« on: March 09, 2022, 12:14:03 AM »

Thanks Alexey. Does the DEM still need to be built using the extrapolated option?