Reality Capture photogrammetry+scanning

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chrisg.cmg
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Reality Capture photogrammetry+scanning

Post by chrisg.cmg »

Who here is using Reality Capture to combine your scans with photogrammetry (UAV or from the ground)? I had initially had really good luck with this program but as I've started trying to use it for more than just small areas/tests I've started to run into some glaring problems. That said, it does require some learning to get the results you want and I may just be overlooking something.

The first problem I've noticed is that when you import laser scans, not all that data necessarily ends up in the final reconstruction, meaning the result is less accurate/complete than the input. Sometimes I find it does a great job at aligning the images to the scan, but sometimes it doesn't, even though the result seems close enough that it should be identifying certain features as the same. Capturing Reality doesn't really spell out how the scan+photo matching works, though one of their support people told me if images were taken on the scanner, that will drastically help align to your photos.

The second problem is that I'm having my doubts about how good their photo matching algorithm is. I'm doing comparisons against Pix4d and in places there is a close match, while other places, not so much (usually that leads me to find there is a massive misalignment somewhere, which seems to happen often).

If someone here is familiar with the program and can tell me I just need to play with this or that setting it would be good to hear, since I was really impressed with Reality Capture at first.
fillway
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Re: Reality Capture photogrammetry+scanning

Post by fillway »

chrisg.cmg wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 11:43 pm
If someone here is familiar with the program and can tell me I just need to play with this or that setting it would be good to hear, since I was really impressed with Reality Capture at first.
I used their software for a while a few years ago when they were the only solution available at that time to produce a 3D mesh (that I was aware of, anyway) from point cloud data. There were quite a few aspects of the program that were really annoying, such as when using point clouds the software building a "box" around the data, the way they segment data in the app, and a few other little things. I played with it again recently, as a demo this time, and they still had that "boxing" problem, and the way they break the data into a bunch of different segments is still there and incomprehensible, but they're still super fast in registering point clouds, and one of the few programs that really get on the GPU(s) to produce their results.

Oh, and having to select the right layout of sections to even see what on earth is going on in the first place is confusing. If you've used the software you likely know what I'm talking about already with that one.

I recall being able to figure out most, if not all, my issues from the in app help menus, which are actually pretty great, and provide some pretty fool proof steps to getting the output that you want. Try those if you haven't already.

There were a number of settings I had to change and quite a bit of cleaning to do, but in the end I was able to get what I wanted out of the program, which was a 3D mesh from a point cloud that would play nice with Unity and the Oculus Rift. It took quite a bit of time and configuration, but it was, as I mentioned, the only way to get it done at the time. Keep on trying! I know they have an in app help topic, as well as youtube instructional video on their own channel, on exactly the issue you're talking about.

TL:DR:
Yes, there probably is some setting that needs to be changed or some box to be ticked somewhere in the software to get you what you want.
Philip Weyhe
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