Highest Scan Quality - Photo Res vs Cloud Density vs Model Quality

[SteveTheScanner]

Me and a few partners are entering the realm of photo scanning and I was hoping to gather some information about how to get the highest possible quality scans.
Field of interest is objects and surfaces/materials, architectural details etc...


From the tests done we noticed that it's very easy to get the system to crash on trying to create a too high quality scan (run out of RAM), I've been through the tips and tricks but was hoping to get some people's opinion on what the best way of compromising is.

Camera/Photos 15-40: Sony A7RII (Photos are 42mp or 7952x5304px)
Desktop: i7 5960x 8 cores 16 threads 3Ghz - 64GB RAM

As of now going into a higher RAM range isn't possible, so I was wondering, how can we get the best quality possible within these hardware limitations.

What is the best tradeoff? Better go with a lower density cloud and higher quality model? Should we downscale the photos to save up RAM? We'd want both the final texture and model to be as detailed as possible of course so any advice on an optimal workflow would be greatly appreciated!

[grommit]

another question might be: what's better, a single 50MP image or 5 10MP images taken from slightly different angles.

[MeHoo]

IMHO...

More angles is always the way to go.  What is the output?  Are you producing human scans?  Environments?  What for?  Games?  Features?  VR?  etc etc..

A lot of these questions determine the avenue you go to be honest.  Body scanning rigs are soooo vastly different than my rig for capturing assets and elements.

My machine is a dual quad core, 256gigs of ram, 2x nvidia 970gtx, 1x quadro k4000.  It is not the fastest rig, but it pushes some serious data through.  I've run out of ram twice on stupid high scans that I tested the rig with (another better-tuned scan with still very high settings ran for 24 days straight and didn't crash).  The software is very very solid IMHO if you do things properly.  For instance.. "ultra high" is not a test... it's completely useless for large data sets.  It might be amazing for close-up skin scans with a low photo count, but for what I am doing, it's overkill that is never seen.

Look into renting the amazon cloud computers for ~ $3 an hour.  Their core counts are just disgusting.. it's the cheapest way to go IMHO, and you can network process with a few.  If you need that power.  I am looking into setting up the base scans, saving the files, and kicking it off to the amazon farm to process.  That way I can keep producing without locking my machine up.  Just a tip. 

Best of luck.

[SteveTheScanner]

Hi Mehoo,

Thanks for the information. Im mostly interested in doing objects/assets/surfaces. Elements could be for games, film, whatever. The quality should be as good as possible (without going too much into the overkill ofcourse)

If you are hitting a roof with your rig we definitely will.
Could you tell me about the amazon cloud computers? I did a quick search but their webservices are so overwhelming, I don't know where to start.

[Vlad]

What is the best tradeoff? Better go with a lower density cloud and higher quality model? Should we downscale the photos to save up RAM? We'd want both the final texture and model to be as detailed as possible of course so any advice on an optimal workflow would be greatly appreciated!

If you'll ask this question on Sketchfab forum me and some other members can answer with some ideas based on many experiments. Just because not so good discuss about cons and pros of app and competitors on forum one of this app.

[MeHoo]

Hi Mehoo,

Thanks for the information. Im mostly interested in doing objects/assets/surfaces. Elements could be for games, film, whatever. The quality should be as good as possible (without going too much into the overkill ofcourse)

If you are hitting a roof with your rig we definitely will.
Could you tell me about the amazon cloud computers? I did a quick search but their webservices are so overwhelming, I don't know where to start.

I used a single A7RII and shot 225 photos and built this using I think ~60gigs of ram

Overkill, but it was a test.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B58_gK7CNnBiUTZwNEVqMGRGQnc

(download, don't stream - for best quality)