Istar Workflow

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Jamesrye
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Istar Workflow

Post by Jamesrye »

I've just completed another scanning project where I've been colourising scans using ColourCloud.

It's all worked well and the results are very impressive. There's still one major headache with the whole process that is causing unnecessarily long delays in our workflow. Each scan (405 in this case) has to be exported one by one from Cyclone - manually - as there is no batch-export function. It takes ages and is very tedious.

So, I've tried using SCENE to import a large, combined e57 file exported from Cyclone - and this works nicely, as the scans can then be batch exported from SCENE and colourised with Color Cloud. The problem with this is that we only have one SCENE license that is tied to an older laptop.

Anyway, I've discovered that ReCap is creating in a temp folder the single e57 files and you can copy these before ReCap deletes them. The problem is that I can't just leave the process to complete whilst I work on something else.

RECAP nicely indexes the scans to .rcs files though. Does anyone know a way to convert the .rcs files to .e57 files? Does anyone else have a better work-around for this issue?

Incidentally, I created my first istar share tour of a nice little church that I recently scanned. If you are interested then you can see it here. I used the images created by ColourCloud as I found that the ImmersiveView stitching was misaligned in some places.

http://www.istarshare.com/tour/5259

Best regards,

James
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Re: Istar Workflow

Post by Phil Marsh »

Someone needs to write an .e57 splitter until Leica add in a batch exporter. Now if only we had a genius programmer like Phill Nixon on the forum ;)

Great looking iSTAR Share by the way.
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Re: Istar Workflow

Post by colhum1 »

Jamesrye wrote:
It's all worked well and the results are very impressive. There's still one major headache with the whole process that is causing unnecessarily long delays in our workflow. Each scan (405 in this case) has to be exported one by one from Cyclone - manually - as there is no batch-export function. It takes ages and is very tedious.
Watch this space :) ...I'm hoping you won't have long to wait...

Colin
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Re: Istar Workflow

Post by max72 »

I'm confident you can split a unified e57 with cloud compare via command line.. maybe accepting some tradeoffs (file names or double pass?).
Anyway a batch process via a cmd file.
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Re: Istar Workflow

Post by max72 »

Tested it..
It looks like you can split your E57 with cloud compare from command line:

Create a bat file . I named it: Cloudcompare split e57.bat

Inside it write the following line:

Code: Select all

for %%f in (%*) DO "C:\yourpathtocloudcompare\cloudcompare.exe" -SILENT -O %%f -C_EXPORT_FMT E57 -SAVE_CLOUDS

Change the path to your cloud compare.
-SILENT eliminates prompt boxes
-O %ff opens the files you dran and drop to the bat file
-C_EXPORT_FMT E57 selects the output format
-SAVE_CLOUDS forces to save the clouds

Now simply drag and drop your clouds to the .bat file
the file names are the processing timestamp and not the original scan name. Could it work?

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Re: Istar Workflow

Post by NTocher »

Jamesrye wrote:I've been colourising scans using ColourCloud. It's all worked well and the results are very impressive. There's still one major headache with the whole process that is causing unnecessarily long delays in our workflow. Each scan (405 in this case) has to be exported one by one from Cyclone - manually - as there is no batch-export function. It takes ages and is very tedious.James
Great News, Leica have announced full integration of iSTAR into Cyclone and TruView at InterGEO this week.
This means that you can now colour your scans directly within the application without exporting to E57, saving you lots of time and making your workflow to capture and overlay iSTAR colour easy and automatic.

For more information, please feel free to contact NCTech or Leica for more information.
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Re: Istar Workflow

Post by Jamesrye »

That's great news! I look forward to the official announcement. :D

Thanks to Massimo for the .bat script for Cloud Compare as well.
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Re: Istar Workflow

Post by Patrick_C »

NTocher wrote:Great News, Leica have announced full integration of iSTAR into Cyclone and TruView at InterGEO this week.
This means that you can now colour your scans directly within the application without exporting to E57, saving you lots of time and making your workflow to capture and overlay iSTAR colour easy and automatic.
If I understand this "integration" correctly it's only ONE scan at a time and the process takes about 6 minutes per scan. That's 12 scans per hour so it may be a much simpler process but "saving you lot's of time" is questionable.

The development is a step in the right direction, but for those processing hundreds or thousands of scans it's a very small step...

If CYCLONE wanted to speed up workflows for "power users" then a multiple file-per-scan export would be far more helpful than cobbling on wonky connections to external software, but I guess it's better than nothing!

Patrick
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Re: Istar Workflow

Post by pburrows145 »

Hi Patrick - this is but stage 1... ;)

I have seen this take as little as 2-3 minutes to be fair.

It takes exactly the same time as ColourCloud, minus export + reimport of your entire dataset.

Talk to Steve reference a beta license (he might be able to wangle one).
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Re: Istar Workflow

Post by Patrick_C »

pburrows145 wrote: export + reimport of your entire dataset.
nicely sidestepped....
:D
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