Messages

136

General / Re: Align taking exponentially longer w/ more tracks added...

« on: July 04, 2021, 10:25:08 AM »

These last few runs were from scratch.

I have the "Keep key points" enabled, and have run it previously just by adding the new tracks the previous total alignment, but had a problem with one area where it didn't want to align, leaving an area with two layers of points...

My P51 is currently chewing thru the 18,000 photos, it's 'Selecting Pairs' still, and is up to 'matches31a.dat', so it might be a couple or three days at this rate.... So i can't test it for a while...


But generally, does adding extra missions/flights/tracks/dives worth of data to any data set increase the Align Time exponentially???

I really hope i'm missing something, as it's becoming unmanageable 

137

General / Re: Align taking exponentially longer w/ more tracks added...

« on: July 04, 2021, 06:09:09 AM »

EEEEEK!

I've added yesterday's scanning tracks... so another 3,000 photos...

Now i have a total of 18,000 cameras.

The previous processing run with 15,000 cameras was "Selecting Pairs", matches in 1000 seconds.
This processing run with 18,000 cameras is giving 1500 seconds!!!

So the alignment is looking like it's take much, much longer than the previous 2.5 days!!!

Please help!
Does anyone know how to prevent this exponential increase in matching time?

138

General / Re: How to select disable cameras.

« on: July 03, 2021, 07:37:26 PM »

How can we delete disabled photos in Metashape Standard?  We can't run scripts.

I've noticed that deleting disabled photos also reduces the tie points, and speeds up processing.  So when i run Reduce Overlap, which disables 1/3 of my photos, i definitely want to delete them all, as it'll save me hours of processing!

139

Feature Requests / Re: Build Depth Maps as separate Job? (or at least save after creating them)

« on: July 03, 2021, 03:03:36 PM »

I don't understand...?

My laptop sometimes crashes because i've undervolted it a smidge too much, or i've tried doing other stuff whilst it's processing, or if i mistakenly created filenames, paths that are too long and Metashape crashes due to the 260 char limit, or other crashes i don't know the causes of...  It's not really important why it's crashed...  sh1t happens... We would just like things saved after each step, because it can save us hours of repeated processing occasionally.

Again, i'm requesting a feature to be extended, to include a stage of processing which logically could be its own 'job' perhaps.  And the reasoning being the same as the reason the "Save project after each step" feature exists.  That's all.

I'm not fussed if it's separated out as it's own task, or if it just triggers the project save, either will be good.

140

General / Re: 100% CPU for minutes after loading heavy project

« on: July 03, 2021, 02:04:38 PM »

OMG...

Enabling VBO makes a huuuuuuuuuuuuge difference!!!


Viewing my model in shaded mode now makes it feel really, really light!!  Even tho it's got 92,000,000 faces! 

The CPU is still slammed to 100% for more than 15 minutes after loading, but the model is super responsive even then.

I've set the VBO to 2048MB for my 4GB Quadro 2200M.  Hope that's correct?

141

General / When to run "Reduce Overlap", and what to follow it with?

« on: July 03, 2021, 12:28:05 PM »

I have a big project with many thousands of images, but the scanning unavoidably has too much overlap.   If i run 'Reduce Overlap' set to 8, it halves the number of cameras and gives much better processing times, and great quality results!!! 

But what is the correct time to run it in the workflow???
Before, after running 'Gradual Selection' tasks???
And do i need to do anything after it?
Optimise Cameras?

Do i also need to delete the disabled cameras?  Are their tie-points removed?  EDIT: They're not disabled with the cameras, so only deleting them actually gets rid of extra tie-points.
And how would i delete them if i only have Standard, and can't run scripts?

Cheers.

142

Feature Requests / Re: Build Depth Maps as separate Job? (or at least save after creating them)

« on: July 03, 2021, 11:52:38 AM »

But what i'm after is that if Depth Maps are generated, that Metashape can save them... So that the work done isn't wasted, if ms or the pc crashes for whatever silly reason...

It's not an issue for those building small projects, but some people, like myself, are working on big tasks, where each stage take multiple hours.

The justification, reasoning is exactly the same as having the "Save project after each step" feature to start with...  I'm just suggesting that Build Depth Maps could be classed as a step worthy of a 'Save Project'.

Oh, and i only have Standard 

143

Feature Requests / Re: Build Depth Maps as separate Job? (or at least save after creating them)

« on: July 02, 2021, 12:47:38 PM »

No.
I mean that Metashape would save the project, like it optionally does when doing batch process jobs.
E.g. After Align Photos it saves, after Build Mesh it saves, etc, etc, etc...
But Build Depth Maps is a subtask within Build Dense Cloud, Build Mesh, etc, if they're told to use it as a source... The project doesn't get saved until both the depth maps and the dense cloud/mesh are completed.
If Metashape crashes, or the pc crashes, for whatever reasons, during the dense cloud or meshing stages, the creation of the depth maps isn't saved to disk (ssd).

144

General / Re: Best workflow for combining images from different missions

« on: July 02, 2021, 08:28:29 AM »

I too have these questions.

I'm doing underwater scanning of a large dive site, and i have 7 dives worth of camera tracks, that are also all in 'free-style' path, with a fair bit of crossing, overlapping.  And also i have 2 cameras on a 3m pole.

Does separating camera tracks into folders affect align time?

Does anyone have any advice for this kind of work?

145

Feature Requests / Build Depth Maps as separate Job? (or at least save after creating them)

« on: July 02, 2021, 07:56:15 AM »

Could Build Depth Maps be it's own Job in the workflow and Batch Process dialog?
Or could the batch process at least save the project after the Depth Maps are created?

I've had Metashape and my machine crash for various reason when Building Mesh, and with my quite large projects, it's rather upsetting to know that the Build Depth Maps had been done successfully, but now it has to build them all over again, which is many hours of wasted time.  It'd be nice to resume Build Meshing and choose to 'reuse depth maps'!

Plus i guess Depth Maps are used as the source for a few things now...

Cheers.

146

Feature Requests / UI: True 'Full Screen' mode

« on: July 02, 2021, 07:31:25 AM »

Would it be possible to optionally have a true full screen mode, where none of Metashape's UI elements are show, no menu, no toolbar...  So it could show just the model viewport?
The menus/toolbar could perhaps show/autohide when the mouse is moved to the top edge of the screen.

E.g. the behaviour of Chrome.

Sometimes i've used OBS Studio to record the screen, as it's way quicker that doing an animation, fly-thru, and i then have to crop the video later, leaving a non-standard aspect ratio.
Also just for showing people, it's nice to just show the model only.

Cheers.

147

Feature Requests / UI: Show 'enabled' for Cameras: "69/123 enabled"

« on: July 02, 2021, 07:21:46 AM »

In the workspace, Cameras already show how many cameras are aligned, out of the total.
But after doing, say, a Reduce Overlap, you get no indication of how many have been disabled, just red dots.

So could we also have the 'enabled' numbers showing, like the 'aligned' already are?

Code: [Select]

Workspace (1 chunk, 123 cameras)
    Chunk 1 (123 cameras, 54,321 points)
        Cameras (111/123 aligned) (69/123 enabled)
The showing of this could be conditional.  If all cameras are enabled, nothing is show, if some are disabled, then it's shown.

Cheers.

148

General / Align taking exponentially longer w/ more tracks added...

« on: July 01, 2021, 12:51:02 PM »

Is it normal that increasing the number of photos, exponentially increases the Align Photos time?
13,000 took 1 day
15,000 took 2.5 days!

What alignment settings may cause this?  I'm sure it's running with defaults.

I've started doing an underwater scanning project, mapping a rocky dive site.
It's a big site, so each dive I'm coming back with about 3,000 time-lapse photos from 2 GoPros (7+8) on a 3m pole (gives good data between them, and 2x quicker).
The tracks I'm swimming on each dive are obviously not nice and neat, mowing the lawn style tracks like a drone can give you... Instead there's a lot of overlapping, crossing, holes... And to add, the water visibility changes each dive, the colour of the water changes and the sun angle/clouds do too... There's also certainly a little too much overlaps going forwards i think... GoPros can't do 3s timelapses, only .5, 1, 2, 5, 10s, etc...  I use 2s...   So a nightmare for the Metashape i guess. Doh.
I have 7 pairs of camera tracks, which are in their own folders.  so 14 folders.

I've just aligned with the latest scans, starting with an blank model, adding the 7 pairs of tracks, totallying 15,000 photos... aligning on high.  Other settings default.....
On my Thinkpad P51 laptop, it took 2.5 days!!!  During the processing, i'm getting times like: "64302505 matches found in 1006.06 sec" during the "Selecting pairs..." cycles!
The previous time i ran it, with 13,000 photos, it was 1 day, and previously with fewer photos, much shorter.

After doing some gradual selection stuff, reduce overlap, it only takes a few hours to mesh and again to texture.  No need to create chunks.

I've attached some pics.
If you squint, you can see some manta rays i photoshopped into the capture from ms.  The mantas are 3-4m across.
And here's a decimated model in Sketchfab.
https://skfb.ly/oo7nq

I thought that the alignment was supposed to be the 'quick' part!
Help!
 

149

General / Re: 100% CPU for minutes after loading heavy project

« on: July 01, 2021, 12:04:16 PM »

Thanks for your reply,

Yes, i have an 'old' Quadro 2200M in my Thinkpad P51.

What is Metashape actually doing in the background though??? It looks and works fine other than being understandably sluggish.  What's it processing/checking???
It was taking about 15 minutes before it calmed down.  And was in fact the same, for the original mesh or the decimated mesh.

I'll give the VBO setting a try.

Does changing the ram value affect processing of alignment, mesh, texture?  My GPU only has 4GB of VRAM.

Cheers.

150

General / Re: Using dGPU AND iGPU is faster?

« on: July 01, 2021, 09:18:19 AM »

Thanks for the reply.

Every test i've done, the iGPU being enabled actually did slow down the Build Texture job a fair bit.  So i've been turning it off for that part of the workflow.

So if you have a crappy, slow dGPU, enabling the iGPU can help...

I'll continue using both during my aligning and meshing.

Cheers.