Sparse Cloud: very few Points

[igor73]

 Looks great and it will be interesting to follow your progress.  T

 I am aslo doing scans for game engines, PBR renders and 3D print using Zbrush as  my main app for editinng , UV and retopology. 
Are you planning on using high settings on the dense cloud?  For a project like this i would probably run it at medium.  That way you should be able to run everything in one chunk using less than 32GB of RAM.  Generating the mesh is the stage that sucks up a lot of RAM.  For this you will have too divide in to chunks if you don´t have a lot of RAM. 

Good luck and keep us updated. 

[holgar]

Looks great and it will be interesting to follow your progress.  T

 I am aslo doing scans for game engines, PBR renders and 3D print using Zbrush as  my main app for editinng , UV and retopology. 
Are you planning on using high settings on the dense cloud?  For a project like this i would probably run it at medium.  That way you should be able to run everything in one chunk using less than 32GB of RAM.  Generating the mesh is the stage that sucks up a lot of RAM.  For this you will have too divide in to chunks if you don´t have a lot of RAM. 

Good luck and keep us updated.

Hi Igor,
I have started the Densecloud with High-settings two days ago and I regret it. My memory is full and swaping. The remaining Time has increased since I last checked. It is now still 31 hours to go. I fear it will increase even more. I guess I will have to cancel the process as I need my computer tomorrow to work. :-(.



Next week I will start it again. Maybe with medium settings or with separated chunks. I really wonder why it is taking all my memory. I have 64 GB. And I thought only Meshgeneration takes so much memory.

I have three options to try:
1. Medium settings
2. High settings but Car divided into two or three chunks
3. Jpg images instead of 16 bit tiff.

Do you think the last option would help to reduce memory cosume in densecloud-generation?

[igor73]

Looks familiar    Thats why i recommended medium setting.  It is probably so slow because you ran out of RAM and its swapping as you say.  In the end it will probably crash before your done so i would cancel. 

You are using 21mpix images so they will eat RAM quickly.  At medium setting you could run up to 3000 images with 64gb RAM in one chunk on the dense cloud stage.  I don´t think you will save any RAM by using JPG but not sure, maybe a little.  Anyone know? 

In many cases the medium setting can actually give better results i have found.   Run a small sample at medium and a sample at high. Medium should easily give you more than enough resolution to create some pretty fantastic normal or displacement maps.  It will save you tons of time using medium.  When you bring this in to Zbrush and start retopolgy and re-projection you will lose some detail anyway so using high might not give you much difference in the end anyway. 

[igor73]

And i think you will be able to process everything in one chunk at the mesh stage also if using medium on the dense cloud. 

[driftertravel]

I don't actually know if this is correct, but in my experience based on your three options:

1. Medium settings - do this! Especially if your target is game ready level assets, unless your target has very small details that you need to pick up.
2. Chunks - not going to help overly much
3. Jpegs - I've found that 8bit tiffs work just as well as 16bit quality wise... not sure about jpegs b/c of the compression artifacts.

Just my .02

[JohnyJoe]

Yes... i would be also quite curious on the difference between 16 bit tiff, 8 bit tiff and maximum quality jpg...?

Can somebody eleborate on this ?

I think that the 16 bit is usefull ONLY when generating texture, right? And even then you would have to save the texture to exr and not tiff because it doesnt support 16 bit tiffs (photoscan, as far as i know)?

so is there any advantage of using 16 bit tiffs over 8 bit tiffs in photoscan at all?

[mrb]

And i think you will be able to process everything in one chunk at the mesh stage also if using medium on the dense cloud.

As others have said, for projects with lots of photos, I only ever use Medium quality for the dense cloud.  High quality just takes way too long, regardless of your RAM or computer!  I only use High Quality if I have under 200-300 photos....