Register360 to ReCap Picture Quality Deterioration

[olil]

Dear All,

If anyone can tell me what is causing the problem with the picture quality difference in the pictures below, I would very much appreciate, as I can't seem to find anything related to it on the forums.

When exporting a project made with RTC360 in register360 (2022.0) to ReCap, the quality from the realview pictures drop drastically for some of the setups. The scans have been a mix of low, medium and high density with pictures. There seems to be a correlation between the density of the scans and the quality of the picture when exported to ReCap, since the scans with high density look fine in ReCap, but the scans with low density have a very low resolution in ReCap.

Thank you in advance!

[Kruse]

check the settings on the scanner as they added a feature that compresses the image quality to match the scan density so 1 pixel per point scanned. I forget the exact setting name, but I believe it's just above the High Tilt Accuracy scan mode option. If you have it disabled, it'll always capture imagery at the max resolution and then you control what resolution you want to import in Register 360.

If you captured a low density scan with the image compression on, there's nothing you can do to get the resolution back without rescanning.

[olil]

Thanks for the reply.
The picture quality in Register360 looks fine wether or not the scan density is low or high. So if it is a setting on the RTC360, why is the quality fine in register360 even on a low density scan?

[Kruse]

Thanks for the reply.
The picture quality in Register360 looks fine wether or not the scan density is low or high. So if it is a setting on the RTC360, why is the quality fine in register360 even on a low density scan?

One way to verify if it really is the full resoltuion or the same in Register 360 is to export out the JPG image for a low density scan as well as one for a high density scan. I believe it should result in a different Mega Pixel image if that compression setting was turned on.

I can't speak to Recap and viewing the imagery if there's anything going on or a way to verify image resolution within the support folders for each setup's imagery, but I know that Register 360 and Leica TruViewer can sometimes be slow to load the full image (considering they're ~20,000 x ~10,000 pixels). There are ways to force it to load the full image resolution, but something like that might be happening in ReCap. Just a thought.

It's been a while since I played with that image compression as I just tell all our staff to leave it off in all circumstances, but If I remeber correctly, it should be a pretty drastic image compression when comparing a low density scan/image to a high density scan/image. It was obvious the difference when I did my testing back in the day.

If that compression wasn't used during the time of scanning and you imported all the setups at the max 5K resolution (in the general settings), I don't have a great idea of what might be causing this. If you exported an e57 and loaded that into ReCap, do you see the same issue? I'm not sure what ReCap can all import though.

[olil]

Thanks for the reply.
The picture quality in Register360 looks fine wether or not the scan density is low or high. So if it is a setting on the RTC360, why is the quality fine in register360 even on a low density scan?

One way to verify if it really is the full resoltuion or the same in Register 360 is to export out the JPG image for a low density scan as well as one for a high density scan. I believe it should result in a different Mega Pixel image if that compression setting was turned on.

I can't speak to Recap and viewing the imagery if there's anything going on or a way to verify image resolution within the support folders for each setup's imagery, but I know that Register 360 and Leica TruViewer can sometimes be slow to load the full image (considering they're ~20,000 x ~10,000 pixels). There are ways to force it to load the full image resolution, but something like that might be happening in ReCap. Just a thought.

It's been a while since I played with that image compression as I just tell all our staff to leave it off in all circumstances, but If I remeber correctly, it should be a pretty drastic image compression when comparing a low density scan/image to a high density scan/image. It was obvious the difference when I did my testing back in the day.

If that compression wasn't used during the time of scanning and you imported all the setups at the max 5K resolution (in the general settings), I don't have a great idea of what might be causing this. If you exported an e57 and loaded that into ReCap, do you see the same issue? I'm not sure what ReCap can all import though.

It seems to be the export to ReCap that is causing the problem.

The resolution from the pictures are the same wether they are from a low density or high density scan, 16384x8192.

When exporting to .e57 the image quality carries over fine when looking at it natively, but as soon you import it into ReCap it can't import it correctly. The problems seems to be an old one when looking at the Autodesk forums: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/recap-fo ... -p/8297230

[Kruse]

It seems to be the export to ReCap that is causing the problem.

The resolution from the pictures are the same wether they are from a low density or high density scan, 16384x8192.

When exporting to .e57 the image quality carries over fine when looking at it natively, but as soon you import it into ReCap it can't import it correctly. The problems seems to be an old one when looking at the Autodesk forums: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/recap-fo ... -p/8297230

I think it was scanned with the compression setting on as an uncompressed, full image resolution import from the RTC 360 should have images with 20,480 x 10,240 pixels. I just double checked some other images I exported in the past.

I'm not saying there isn't something wrong at the moment with ReCap or the RCP files that get exported out of Reg360, but the the image resolution you stated would confirm 1 aspect of the issue at hand.

[JNally]

I have been asking this question for a while now with Leica. If you export an LGS file to use in cloudworx. Then go and view it in the LGS viewer you will see the "full quality" image. However using it in non leica software doesn't carry over the full quality image. As of writing this I have not been given a workaround or found one myself.

[VXGrid]

check the settings on the scanner as they added a feature that compresses the image quality to match the scan density so 1 pixel per point scanned. I forget the exact setting name, but I believe it's just above the High Tilt Accuracy scan mode option. If you have it disabled, it'll always capture imagery at the max resolution and then you control what resolution you want to import in Register 360.

If you captured a low density scan with the image compression on, there's nothing you can do to get the resolution back without rescanning.

Wow this makes so much sense for me now.
So I got some support requests regarding an E57 from Leica where I saw something similar and was woundering why this was happening and why somebody would do this.

So let me clarify this:
I think most software packages would think of the point cloud rasterisation identical to the image, meaning one pixel in the image is one point in the point cloud.
Sure there are spots where there is no point behind a pixel, sometimes it's one single pixel sometimes its complete areas (eg. sky).
But leaving complete rows empty does not make any sense in my opinion.

Now scanning with a full resolution image (20,000 x 10,000) and having the point cloud turned on low, will result in something like this:
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 ...
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 ...
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 ...
0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 ...
0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 ...
Where 1 means a pixel where point information exists and 0 where no point information is there.

1. Measuring in this kind of panorama is kinda strange, because if you pick a pixel where no point is behind it, which 3d spatial data do you use?
2. ReCap enforces this by doing a resampling, meaning they take every pixel with a point behind it, and put it somewhere else in the panorama, therefore it looks low resolution and pixely (normally you would mean the pixels to get a nice transition in image processing).

You should test the difference between two scans with low scan settings and this "compress image quality" turned on and off and check the results in ReCap.

[Kruse]

I have been asking this question for a while now with Leica. If you export an LGS file to use in cloudworx. Then go and view it in the LGS viewer you will see the "full quality" image. However using it in non leica software doesn't carry over the full quality image. As of writing this I have not been given a workaround or found one myself.

Interesting... We export e57's with every single dataset and then they get uploaded to Cintoo Cloud. While the e57 and Cintoo don't accept or use the HDR images (if they're even included in the e57), we haven't seen any degradation in photo quality when comparing Cintoo to Register 360/Leica TruView.