Texture scanning function

[Tok_Tok]

Hello,

Currently I have a texture scanner that takes 8 top photo's with different lighting directions that I process using Substance Designer's material scanning function. This works well but I'm limited to 8k max output resolution. My question is, can Agisoft photogrammetry software work with the same process that Substance Designer is using? Rendering a height, normal and albedo map from 8 pictures from the same perspective with different lighting conditions.

Thanks!

Best,
Joep

[Mak11]

No, it can't do that.
What you are doing in Substance is RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) not photogrammetry.

Cheers

Mak

[Tok_Tok]

That's too bad. But thanks for the terminology, I didn't know it was called that. I can now google for some other options.

Do you maybe know other software that can do this?

[MikeZ]

Rti is Just a name for the process that uses polynominal  texture mapping. You can find ptm code that will process large file but PTM is calibrated what means that You need to know light positions. What substance is using IMO is uncalibrated photometric stereo. There  is plenty of code and papers about these techniques. Knowing the names You should be able to find what You need.

[Tok_Tok]

Unfortunately I'm not a coder so I'm not able to write my own software. I found this though: https://dabarti.com/capture/

It's very limited with settings and I still have to reshoot the photo's with a sphere next to it but it looks interesting. If you know anything else like this, please let me know because I would like to have some options of what's available 

[MikeZ]

As I said there is code, you don't need to write it. You can look at CHI website they have RTIbuilder but it won't process 8k. If you want I can contact you with my friend from Wroclaw University that implemented a more developed RTI option without limit of data processing. But it will cost you a bit, he is insanely busy, especially when now he is finishing the prototype of RTI machine. But I think one consultation will be enough to help you with your problems.

[Tok_Tok]

Thanks for the proposal but I'm more looking for an off the shelve solution. Investing in something like is, for the moment, not within reach for me. I have a limited budget that I need to spend elsewhere. But maybe in the future this might be very useful. I'll keep this thread saved.

Thanks again for your help!

[MikeZ]

This is what I'm talking about. He knows for sure everything that is on the market as he did researches. You don't think for sure that someone will give you anything else than just a recommendation during one phone call . I know that he used RTIbuilder from CHI at the beginning (I did too) but as that was quite limited and old he switched to something else, also open source but I can't help you what was that because I don't know. If you have time you can search the net and it is sure you will find it too as he does. Good luck!

[Tok_Tok]

Ah oke! sorry I misunderstood. If he has some advice or knows the name of that open source program I'm very curious/interested in that. Can you send me a PM with he details?

[MikeZ]

I will ask him when we'll talk. By the way, you have inspired me. I will take a look if it is possible to create something simple with GUI

[Tok_Tok]

Please do! I'm curious to what it might bring.

That would be awesome! I'm stuck with Substance Designer, which works fine but it's limited to 8k and I've talked to the person behind Texture Supply and he says that it's blurring the textures so he's using Dabarti. But that has no controls.

If you can create GUI for an open-source program that, apparently is very good, that would be very interesting.

My goal is to scan pieces of clothing and use them for highly realistic characters. Like I said in my first post I have a scanner but it's small and with 4k output it's "low res". I'm going to buy an Lumix S1R camera which can shoot 187 megapixel(!) images and with that I want to build a bigger scanner that can scan entire pieces of clothing without having to stitch together the individually scanned pieces. The camera shoots 16k images but Substance only exports 8k at the moment, so bummer.  Another downside to Substance is that you need to put in square images (as far as I know). Being able to use rectangular images save some time.

Keep me posted!

[Riky07]

Hi!
I'm using substance and dabarti too.
I'm interested on that too.

I hope to see some good news from yours side.

[AdrienB]

Hi there

you can try with another workflow ( it's the one I use )

Take pictures of your patern with a flash, always perpendicular to your subject.  ( a cloudy day without flash is better )

Then use metashape to create an orthophoto which will be your diffuse map

Put it into photoshop to select the best part and  make it tilable

Use materialize to create all your maps ( normal, metallic, AO, ... )

From my own experience its the best way
It looks strange to use RTI process because you can bake your textures with most of 3D modeling programs ( Blender can do it )

Other thing, if you create this for 3D model viewing ( like sketchfab ) 8k texture is good enough,  and make sure that the algorithm which stitch your pictures to a 160mpx pictures don't create artefact.
As I said, from my own experience, taking 7x24mpx pic and an orthophoto from them looks always better than algorithmic big pictures ( A7RIV, S1R, .. )

[Tok_Tok]

Sure you can use photogrammetry to scan an object and then make textures from an othographic view but for me it's also important to take into account the time it takes to make a texture. The way you describe it takes much longer than having a 3d scanner where you can just lay out the material you need and take 8 photo's. Processing them in Substance or dabarti takes relatively little time.

@MikeZ I haven't been able to find the open source version you talked about earlier. Do you have a name for me? And did you talk to the guy yet?