Laser scan + pictures integration

[Mohabon]

Hello,

i find the integration of Laser Scans into MS a very nice step head, but actually it misses a couple of very important features in our opinion.
- Now Laser scans can be registered with nearly millimetric accuracy in 3rd party software if using Leica RTC360 or FARO or RIEGL devices, and it is also possible to export an orthomosaic from Laser Scan processing software, but it will always result "dotted"

 -Now MS allows to import pictures and spread these onto laser scans, to obtain a nice FULL orthomosaics, especially if working on facades or vertical surfaces.

1) The big problem is that importing already registered scans into MS now results in loosing registration, so GCPs are required to georeference the cloud again: this is just a waste of time and decrease the overall accuracy of the project, since laser scans were already registered to millimeter accuracy. We would greatly appreciate a workflow that allow us to import laser scan by preserving their registration.

2) Once suggestion at point 1 will be implemented, we would like to implement also a second features: now to setup the projection plane for facade orthomosaic is everything but intuitive (it is required to tick 3 points on the surface and define the plane like this): it would be much better to import the projection plan from SHP or DXF, allowing the user to exact define the projection plane and angle.

We hope these features (primarily at point 1) will be implemented as soon as possible.

Kind regards

[dsmapping]

I have been playing with this today.  I imported a scan I did with the RTC360. Exported the e57 (as separate files i believe) format out of Register 360 and imported the scan into Metashape with no issues, the scan maintained its registration.  What I cannot seem to figure out is how to properly align the images we took from the drone.  Ive been following Agisoft's tutorial page on how to do this with no luck; https://agisoft.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/31000168474-terrestrial-laser-scans-processing-in-metashape-2-1#Processing-of-terrestrial-laser-scans-with-images

At this point this is just cool feature but I can see a lot of potential for being able to do this. We have a project at the moment that did not require control, but we have both RTC data and UAV.  Normally we gps everything so each cloud drops right on on each other no problem.  This time, it would be great to be able to align the laser scan with the photogrammetry.   There is not just one issue here, and we have tried several different variations of Agisoft's tutorial. I did notice that after attempting to align the photos it caused the scans to not be aligned. Have you had success at all in combining everything?

[Mohabon]

Hello,

when importing E57 from RTC360, the registration is preserved, as you correctly mentioned.

After you import pics and follow the Agisoft document you mentioned, then it happens that laser scans are unlocked and the combined pointcloud + pics is georeferenced with positions from pics, so registration of laser scans is lost.
There is workaround (a python file that could be requested) from Agisoft allowing, using GCPs, to register laser-scans again, but it is not state-of-art solution and we hope that a new method will be implemented in next versions.

For what i know, there is only 1 software that operates combined photogrammetry with laser scans that is 3Dflow Zephyr, but it is really really slow and results are not so enthusiastic: I am pretty much sure that once MS will implement this new features, it will be top peformance solution as usual!