I tried using lens to calibrate and got worse results than doing it normally. I gave this another go and shot differently. Instead of orbiting around my subject, I did pan sweeps then moved then pan swept, then moved. This produced a series of images in a straight line, looking straight forward instead of constantly changing angles. It appeared to work better, but the color of the object (dark grey) is now causing PS to ignore half of the faces on it. I also can't seem to get multiple sides of the object to align. If I process all images at once, I get a bunch that align wrong and since I can't see each images' contribution to the scene, I can't very well select those images easily and reprocess them.. and since I also can't seem to get multiple chunks aligned together, I am totally clueless as to how to get a single subject processed.
I'm still battling this app, trying to find the right combination of tips and tricks. The manual and tutorials are very unhelpful unfortunately and leave much up to the guessing phase. :/
One question I'm still up in the air on, is whether or not flash photography works, and if a constant or variable light source is better. My goal is to use cross-polarized flash to get perfect diffuse maps generated with very little retouching needed to remove specular highlights/shadows. As we use this software at work to generate meshes for films, I've purchased it for myself at home to learn better. Not being able to set markers in the images, and having to actually put tiny markers on the physical subject is wildly inconvenient and I think the biggest reason for my frustrations thus far.
I have yet to get chunks to align together as well. Seems that feature at least on the standard edition is rather useless.
Another question I have is about Depth of Field due to aperture settings. I'd assume that shooting a macro lens at f/2.8 is not ideal, but if I can't get flash images to work, I'm struggling with being able to hot-light everything in order for it to work. I'm not shooting anything outdoors in daylight currently. Is a smaller aperture like f/11+ better or does adding in more background detail cause more problems?
Any help is appreciated as always.