Messages

91

General / Re: Agisoft Metashape 1.8.0 pre-release

« on: October 15, 2021, 08:38:40 PM »

I know we can shuffle the old version to a new folder and install the new version in the standard folder, so that we can have both installed, for testing...  Even the licence works without copying over any files now i think...

But could we have an option in the Installer, on the 'Destination Folder' page, so that it installs it in a separate folder, and has it's own preferences storage?  Perhaps with with the option to import your production version preferences over during install.

It could be installed installed in the "C:\Program Files\Agisoft\Metashape 1.8.0 Build 13257 Pre-Release" folder, say... Automatically including the version and build number perhaps.  And including these versions/build number in the Start Menu shortcuts, etc.  So dead easy to find, differentiate from our production version we have installed.

Later, it'd also be easy to cleanly uninstall these test versions from Windows' Apps & Features list.

Then when the new version is formerly released, we just install that as normal, and it updates our installation as it usually does.

We could then have as many old and newer versions installed as we wanted, really easily, making testing and benchmarking dead easy too.

92

General / multi-mission scans- give priority to latest, when overlapping?

« on: October 15, 2021, 07:52:31 PM »

Could we prioritise, say, the latest scan, such that if it overlaps an area covered by another, older scan, that its data is used in preference, and the 'merging' only happens at the edge of the new scan, where it blends into the old scan?

I have several scans of a dive site, and some of the scans overlap quite a lot, and have been done over weeks/months... plus, some of the terrain is sand, which moves from day to day, the ripples are different, or it'll be 0.5m different height after a few months or strong swells.
So when i merge the scans from each, almost all of it is great, as the rocks an corals haven't change at all, or not enough to care about... But at the edge of the reef where it meets the sand, i have problems with two surfaces, one floating above the other, showing the old level of the sand and the new level.

Right now, i'm facing the task of going thru each of my scans and disabling all the cameras in the older scans that cover these sandy areas, problem areas, etc, such that when i merge all the scans photos together for the big Alignment, i won't have too many weird surfaces to deal with.  This may take i while i think.......

IF we could give, say, Camera Groups hierarchy, so each mission would be in its own group, and you'd number them as needed, possibly chronologically, or just where one mission got better date...
Then when aligning, MS would take that group's cameras to form the topography, ignoring most of the overlapping group with the lower ranking.
Obviously, each scan track goes a bit fluffy at its edges, so perhaps it'd have the boundary set at a threshold value, so that it was still strong data before it blended into the old scan data.
As i'm doing my mapping/modelling project, i'm learning a lot about the techniques needed in the scanning, and i'm also sometime presented with much better conditions, visibility and lighting, such that the scans gotten are just much higher quality.

This would make adding higher quality scans to a data set much, much easier and quicker, for us multi-mission folk.

93

Feature Requests / Re: Edit size of 'Show Cameras' rectangles

« on: October 15, 2021, 07:21:08 PM »

Also, Is there also a way of changing the colour of the rectangles?  I can't find it in Settings...
I have features in my scans that are a very similar colour to this... so they don't stand out as much as i'd like...  Red would be a lot better, as there's nothing red underwater (that looks red with natural lighting), as it's all absorbed by the water...  Everything's green and blue.

Thanks.

94

Feature Requests / Re: Edit size of 'Show Cameras' rectangles

« on: October 15, 2021, 07:15:59 PM »

AMAZING!
Just what i wanted!!!!
Now i don't have to save an image at 16,000 pixels wide to see my tracks! 

Though the key is SHIFT + Mouse Wheel!!!

As CTRL changes the Perspective angle, with hilarious consequences! 

Please document this!
And other hidden gems!

Thanks.

95

Feature Requests / Re: Port zoom from Agisoft Viewer to Agisoft Pro

« on: October 15, 2021, 07:09:18 PM »

After zooming, double click on the model/point and this will set the centre of rotation on that surface/point...  it'll centre what you double-clicked on to the centre of the viewport...  Then i'll move around as expected.

You might then get foreground stuff whizzing past, or you'll see clipping of stuff too near or far.
This is fairly standard behaviour with most 3D applications i think.

96

General / Re: Could MS use MORE RAM???

« on: October 15, 2021, 06:45:29 PM »

Yes, that is true.
My Task Manager is reporting that it's holding 45GB Cached right now...

But a lot of the work done on software, like metashape, rightly goes into reducing it's RAM requirements... And there are lots of MS users posting on here that deal with very high resolution cameras images, who frequently run out of ram... 
So i was wondering if MS has been optimised perhaps with respect to reducing ram usage, but at the expense of some performance? So perhaps MS could have a RAM hungry mode when there was enough ram?  Where it could keep stuff in ram other than the usual data that's written out to disk, and cached...

it's probably not the case, the bottlenecks are all in the GPU/CPU, but i thought i'd ask.

97

Feature Requests / Edit size of 'Show Cameras' rectangles

« on: October 15, 2021, 04:52:15 PM »

My projects often land up with lots of criss-crossing scanning tracks, with 1,000s of photos... and if i turn on 'Show Cameras' in the model viewport, it just turns into one big purple splodge, with camera vector lines poking out like hairs... it's not at all useful, unless i zoom in, and then I'm only viewing a tiny part of the model, and not helping me see the camera tracks as easily, for whatever reason...

See my attached screenshots...  One zoomed out, one zoomed in... the zoomed out one is effectively unusable, but it's zoomed to a sized i need it to be usable...  Zoomed in, where the rectangles are visible, it's too zoomed in to be of help.

Could we have a setting to edit the size of these camera rectangles?
It looks like they're a ratio of the viewport's size?
I'd like to make mine a lot, lot smaller.  And perhaps a set size, rather than a ratio of the viewport...  It might be easier to work with for what i want...
Is there a hidden variable that can be edited, maybe?

Thanks!

98

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

« on: October 15, 2021, 04:27:25 PM »

This screenshot shows the the previous loading of the project, and then a few minutes later, me switching the default model from the decimated one, to the original 'heavy' 3D model.
Nothing else is being done.

This happens every time.
Project size does change the time at 100% though.

99

General / Could MS use MORE RAM???

« on: October 15, 2021, 04:16:35 PM »

This is probably upside-down compared with all other RAM usage questions!!! 

I have 64GB of RAM in my P51 Thinkpad, and only deal with 12MP GoPro images (but 1,000s of them)...  When processing my models, with the settings i use, MS just doesn't seem to use much RAM...  It's only in the teens... sometimes in the 20s...  But i'm just never going into the 30s, 40s, let alone the 50s, or 60s!

Could any of the processing be sped up by actually making more use of the RAM if it is plentiful?  Or is the bottleneck completely with the GPU/CPU processing?

Cheers.

100

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

« on: October 15, 2021, 04:09:18 PM »

Same, the very latest, Metashape Standard 1.7.5 13229

The 100% CPU load triggers when loading, when i change 3D Models, or if i change view to Model Shaded, etc...
I don't observe much disk activity.  Just 100% CPU
Does MS need to do what it's doing at this time???  The 3D model, etc. loads really quick and moves around... Could it do this task at a lower priority, or do it later when needed by a dependant task?  Can there be an option to 'Defer loading _____' (whatever it is), so we're not bogged down by it unnecessarily?

Project loaded:
Photos: 12MP GoPro Hero7 & 8
Cameras: 10,695/10842 Aligned
Tie Points: 8,633,400
Depth Maps: 10,635, Medium Quality, Mild Filtering
3D Model: 135,950,069 faces, Medium quality
3D Model: 5,699,999 faces, Medium quality (decimated for Sketchfab)

See the attached screenshot...
The traces from XTU show the 15 minutes of 100% when i loaded the above model.
The decimated model was 'default'.
I've just changed the default to the original full model and it's triggered the 100% CPU, as expected...

101

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

« on: October 15, 2021, 09:46:07 AM »

I'm still plagued by the 10-15 minute 100% CPU load slowing everything to snails pace after switching to my 'heavy' shaded or textured models...
VBO also now doesn't seem to give me ability to manipulate the models freely any more either... strange...  It's really heavy now.


Alexey, can you please give us incite to what MS is doing when loading these models, to cause the very long 100% CPU load??/

102

Feature Requests / Animation:- Fly THROUGH viewpoints with smooth camera track

« on: September 25, 2021, 07:28:42 AM »

I'm having a nightmare wrestling with the animation feature of Metashape.
When i set the viewpoints, i thought that the animation would actually visit that view on it's path around the scan... But if Smooth Camera Track is turned on, it simply doesn't.  It wonders over towards it, but never gets there, biases looking far too high above the object and then continues over to then miss the next one....  so the animation never shows what i wanted, what i'd told it to.
Then when i try to edit the viewpoints, by double clicking on it, moving the view, then clicking update for that viewpoint, it lands up editing it is a completely weird way, not resembling what i did.    Something is wrong here, are there bugs in this editing/updating feature?

So can we have an option to make the smooth camera track pass THROUGH each viewpoint we've set, on it's path?
So every viewpoint, view, angle, is present in the final exported video?

Thanks.

103

General / Re: How does Metashape determine the orientation of the final model?

« on: September 12, 2021, 02:45:39 PM »

Indeed.  I've been using the '1, 3, 5, 7 + grid set to meters' trick for a while.
it's fairly easy to do.  And if you spend a bit of time, you could scale it fairly accurately.

But it'd be nice to have, say, 3 markers I could place and get it to just jump into the correct position and scale.

104

General / Workflow for Multi-mission, overlapping, UW scans.

« on: September 08, 2021, 11:13:19 AM »

Here's my workflow I'm trialling for dealing with multi-mission scans that also overlap a lot (too much)...
This has previously caused HUGE align times (3d), especially in the 'Selecting pairs' stage, most likely due to the excessing overlap.  Aligning every photo (19,000 so far) from scratch just isn't practical any more, so I'm reducing overlap as i go, and adding the next scan's photos to the growing alignment of the previous scan's photos...

The project:
I've been scanning an underwater dive site using 2x 12MP GoPros on a 3m pole, 'flying' 3-6m above, cameras normal to the bottom/slope/rocks... The 2x GoPros just make it 2x quicker to scan... It then produces a scan with two parallel, but not synchronised, time-lapse photo camera tracks, that have good to too much overlap side-to-side, depending on flying height, and good to too much overlap going forward, depending on how fast I'm swimming, drifting and the flying height again...  Sadly you can only set the GoPro's time-lapse photo interval to 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, etc seconds...  I'm using 2, though 3 would be better i think!
Due to the nature of diving and the dive site, each trip there and scan means i land up scanning over parts previously scanned, and it's amazingly easy to miss patches, not know where you are, and not swim in straight lines.  Some of the big features, house sized boulders need a spiral scan, the rest mostly a 'mowing the lawn' u-pattern.
Conditions are usually sub-optimal... greenish water sometimes, not that great vis (10-15m), and sun shimmering on the shallower rocks.  So each scan can look quite different... a 'different' colour. doh..
A 'good' scan dive gives me 1,500 photos from each GoPro... So 3,000 per scan.  The reduce overlap to 8 reduces this down by about a third to 2,000...
Due to these conditions, and the fact that I'm simply not looking for mm accuracy, only a 3D model of the rock formations, sand patches, corals, etc. I'm not pushing Metashape Standard with high quality settings, which has sometimes actually given better alignments for my crappy images, and which obviously saves time too.

Workflow:
Enable Keep Key Points in Preferences, to allow adding photos to a previous alignment.

For each scan pair (from both GoPros combined):
Add Photos and create Folder with scan name.
Align Photos:  Low - GenPre - RefPre-Est - 20,000 - 2,000 - ExclStatTiePts - AdptCamModFilt
Save as 'Aligned' (just in case)
Select any Unaligned - Reset Alignment - Align Selected
Gradual Selection: - ReconUncert = 15 - ProjAccuracy = 15  Then Optimise Cameras
Check Region, Resize.
Build Mesh from Sparse.
Reduce Overlap: Surface Coverage = 8
Select disabled Cameras and Remove.
Optimise Cameras
Generate Mesh from Depth Maps to
Save as "Scan 'n' reduced"
...Repeat for all other previous or new scans...
This reduces a 3,000 photo scan with too much overlap to 2,000.

Combining 'reduced' scans:
Load "scan 1 reduced"
Append "scan 2 reduced"
Remove all of scan 2's parts leaving its folder of now unaligned cameras only.
Move that camera folder from chunk 2 to chunk 1, next to 1's camera folder (already aligned).
Repeat the above steps from 'Align Photos', Ensuring Reset Alignment is NOT set.
Saving after alight as "1+2 aligned"
Optimising and reducing as above
Saving after optional meshing as "scans 1+2 reduced"
...Next, repeat, appending "Scan 3 Reduced" etc... Until you have "Scans 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+...."

This has reduced the total number of photos needed for the area covered by about a half i think.

This then give me the mesh/model of the summation of all those overlapping scans, without the 3 days of aligning all the photos in one go.

Please feel free to rip into this workflow with any suggestions... 
Yes, I've only gone for low, 20k, 2k... only pushed gradual selection to 15... chosen 8 as my overlap...  Should i change any of these for this type of job???

See my Sketchfab page in my Signature below for previous versions of this model of Manta Point I'm creating...
I'll post some photos later...  Waiting for the alignment after adding scan 7 of 8...

Cheers.

105

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

« on: September 08, 2021, 09:46:49 AM »

I've been using an overlap of 8
I tried 6, but i landed up with a few holes in trickier, shadowed areas of the UW scans.

I've also been running Optimise Cameras afterwards... Is this needed?