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Topics - jenkinsm

Pages: 1 [2]
16
Feature Requests / Integrate Object Capture API on Mac OS
« on: February 07, 2022, 10:25:46 PM »
I have been playing around with PhotoCatch for Mac OS and it's able to produce some really impressive models, especially with tricky subjects like cars (lots of reflections, smooth surfaces, etc.)

I'm not super happy with the UV mapping though, it's nowhere near as elegant as Metashape.

Would it be possible to integrate the Object Capture API in such a way that it could be selected as a method of generating a mesh, and then Metashape's normal UV mapping and texture generation would take over for that step? That would be very useful!


17
Face and Body Scanning / iPhone Front Camera = Ideal Face Scanning Device
« on: February 03, 2022, 06:30:19 AM »
For anyone doing face scanning, grab an iPhone and take some Portrait mode pictures in JPEG (not HEIC) with the front camera. Import them into Metashape 1.8 as Laser Scans and you'll have an absolutely perfect face model with very little effort.

Here's a short video clip of a quick test I did, using myself as the subject. I even captured the photos myself!

https://vimeo.com/673018783

18
Feature Requests / Add support for transparency (alpha channel) in images
« on: February 03, 2022, 06:29:15 AM »
Can Metashape be updated to include support for alpha channel transparency in images?

I figured out that I can mask out the sky super quickly in DaVinci Resolve and export 16-bit uncompressed TIFF images with alpha. But Metashape currently interprets the transparent area as solid black and the black ends up as part of the mesh at the end.

I hope this is an easy addition because it will speed up my workflow probably tenfold. Right now, the best solution I've found is to either use a Photoshop action with the Sky Selection tool to make masks as PNG files or use my DaVinci Resolve method and output black-and-white 8-bit TIFF files. The first method produces smaller files but takes a lot longer, while the second method is a lot faster but results in a second set of TIFF images that either waste space or would then have to be converted to PNG or JPEG.

Including support for transparency would mean I could do everything in one pass in Resolve: split my video into frames, flatten the contrast while increasing the midtone detail, AND mask out the sky/other unwanted parts of the image (such as the capture car).

19
General / Can Metashape support transparency (alpha channel) in images?
« on: February 02, 2022, 08:51:17 AM »
This is maybe a question for the developers more than anyone else. Can Metashape be updated to include support for alpha channel transparency in images?

I figured out that I can mask out the sky super quickly in DaVinci Resolve and export 16-bit uncompressed TIFF images with alpha. But Metashape currently interprets the transparent area as solid black and the black ends up as part of the mesh at the end.

I'd hope this is an easy addition because it will speed up my workflow probably tenfold. Right now, the best solution I've found is to either use a Photoshop action with the Sky Selection tool to make masks as PNG files or use my DaVinci Resolve method and output black-and-white 8-bit TIFF files. The first method produces smaller files but takes a lot longer, while the second method is a lot faster but results in a second set of TIFF images that either waste space or would then have to be converted to PNG or JPEG.

Including support for transparency would mean I could do everything in one pass in Resolve: split my video into frames, flatten the contrast while increasing the midtone detail, AND mask out the sky/other unwanted parts of the image (such as the capture car).


20
General / How does Metashape decide which cameras to use for texturing?
« on: January 31, 2022, 01:03:20 PM »
I found this note from Alexey in an old post from 2013 and I was wondering is anyone has more information about how Metashape chooses which camera to use for texturing:


"For texturing PhotoScan uses cameras that are looking in the direction parallel to the surface normal in the area being textured."

My question is: What happens if two (or more) cameras are looking in the direction parallel to the surface normal?

In my case, I captured a road using an iPhone (this is the high quality dataset) and a 360 GoPro (reference dataset for GPS and image alignment)

I wasn't expecting to use the 360 photos for mesh and texture generation, but it turns out that the 360 cam contributes to the tree meshes in areas that were out of frame on the iPhone, so I'd like to use them.

So what I need to k ow is how to create the textures in such a way that the road and surroundings are textured from the iPhone images, while the treetops are textured from the GoPro.

My assumption is that I will have to mask out the bottom half of the GoPro images, but I would love to hear any insights into how Metashape handles thus.

21
I thought I fixed this error but now it's back again and I don't know what is causing it. I input about 25 GCPs and when I go to Optimize, I get this error.

Any help is appreciated!

22
Bug Reports / Video import not working (tried 1.7 PC and 1.8 Mac)
« on: November 12, 2021, 10:12:21 PM »
I tried to import a video in various formats but nothing worked. I used both 1.7.1 on a PC and 1.8 on a Mac. The PC gave an error and the Mac did nothing after proceeding from the video import dialog box.

What are the exact codec specifications that Metashape will accept? The manual talks about the container only (mpy, mov, etc.) but does not mention the codec requirements or limitations.

Also, does it have a resolution limit? These are 4K videos shot on an iPhone.

23
General / Trouble with Textures
« on: October 25, 2021, 11:37:48 PM »
I'm having trouble with textures. In some areas where the shaded model looks perfect (LEFT), the textures (RIGHT) are all messed up.

Am I doing something wrong? I'm generating the textures from the images. Should I use the dense cloud instead?


24
Hi all,

I'm doing some experimentation with the pro version demo and I was curious if anyone has done something similar? Would be great to learn what works and doesn't from someone more experienced.

I'm testing out a process for making tracks for a driving simulator (Assetto Corsa) using a combination of Google Street View 360 panoramas and aerial shots exported from Google Earth Studio.

The best street view images are 133MP so there's a lot of data to work with, but the downside is that the photos are captured kinda far apart, so I am using the aerial images to sorta "fill in the gaps" and also to capture the surrounding area that is not viewable from the road.

It's actually working very well, and I'm starting to tinker with different texture settings so I have as much detail on the road as possible.

One thing I'm struggling with that I'd love advice on:

When a photo doesn't align automatically, I can't seem to do anything to force it to align. Sometimes a whole group of photos won't align, even though it seems like they should, and I don't know what to do with them at that point.

All of the images have GPS coordinates and altitude in the EXIF. The street view panos also have yaw data. I set the coordinates to match Google Earth (WGS 84 + EGM96 height), and everything shows up on the map in the exact right location, so can I use this to help guide the software to align certain photos? If so, how?

Thanks in advance for your help!

25
Bug Reports / RESOLVED - Issues with project
« on: October 14, 2021, 10:03:10 PM »
Hi all,

I am using the trial of Metashape Professional and while the results are impressive (when it works), I have encountered numerous bugs and problems that are extremely disappointing considering this is $3500 software.

The current showstopper is an issue when generating a mesh. The decimation seems to never complete, it gets stuck at 80%.

I searched and other people with this problem likely did not have enough RAM to complete the job, but my PC has 128GB of RAM so that's probably not the issue. What's worse is that Metashape is currently using only 3,350 MB of RAM so there is clearly a problem in the software and not in my RAM capacity.

I will try to make the mesh with decimation disabled so I can at least move forward with this project, but this is really disappointing especially on top of the other problems I've had (point clouds and models disappearing when I try to reset the view, changes to coordinate system making everything disappear, color correction making all my images bright red with no way to undo the damage, images that should align are not aligning, etc.)

Is this software really that bad or am I just having an unusual amount of issues?

Can anyone suggest a better program that will accept 360 spherical images?

Most importantly, how can I fix this problem with decimation?

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