Large holes in model after updating to 1.8.1

[eastonmbio]

We are using large photosets (2000-4000) to build scans of coral reefs in situ. When processing on ver. 1.7.5 we had no issue (we were aware of approximate maximum sizes of projects before processing would fail and adjusted the workflow accordingly). After updating to metashape 1.8.1 with the goal of using split in chunks to process larger photosets more quickly, we found that regardless of whether we used this script or processed plots as one large chunk, large holes appeared in both the dense cloud and mesh - the reconstructed scene has no resemblance to the true scene. None of the settings were changed (alignment quality, no. photos, dense cloud settings, mesh face count were identical to before).

Is there a list of settings that have been automatically changed to speed up processing between versions?

[CheeseAndJamSandwich]

Have you tried using Depth Maps instead of Dense Clouds for your reef scans?  (unless you need DCs for other tasks?)
It saved a heap of time for me and my 'little' scans, and gave better results for my purposes.  Though the blobby bug meant i've been doing most of the processing on 1.7.3.

[eastonmbio]

I think it may yield the results we are looking for. We don't require dense clouds for our purposes, so my research group is currently trialling depth maps-based meshing. Thanks for the response. It would be nice if we could figure out the holes using the dense clouds though, just from the perspective of people who want to understand the software as much as possible. I have a feeling it's the max neighbours settings but I'm looking to have this confirmed as it's the only thing that seems to have changed by default after the update.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello eastonmbio,

Can you share some screenshots demonstrating the issues and specify the processing parameters used (via script and via batch process, if you are using it after the script)?

In case you can also share any sample dataset that we can use on our side, please send the download link to support@agisoft.com.

[stephan]

While it does not have much bearing on the type of work I do, I also have the impression that the meshing algorithm on point clouds produces bigger gaps in 1.8.1