Infamous 11foot8 Bridge in Durham, NC - 3d Scanned, Meshed, Measured, Animated

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Matt Blackwood
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Full Name: Matthew Blackwood
Company Details: Scanning Cars LLC
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Infamous 11foot8 Bridge in Durham, NC - 3d Scanned, Meshed, Measured, Animated

Post by Matt Blackwood »

Hello everyone, been a while since I have posted here! I just recently made a youtube video showing how I 3d scanned the infamous 11foot8 (now 12foot4) bridge in Durham, NC. You may have seen the videos on youtube of it damaging unsuspecting overheight vehicles. I thought it would be an interesting scene to try out a new meshing process I had been developing and to see what the actual clearance of the bridge is. I scanned it 17 times using a Faro X130 at 1/5th resolution 3x quality with color. I then registered it in Faro Scene, and applied the color. I then exported each scan as an individual e57 file with color and grey values. I ran the e57 files through some custom code I wrote in python to mesh the entire scene. The result is a textured mesh of a bit over 2 million polygons - the scene is around 650 feet long. I did some cleaning in Rhino3D to remove the traffic, and then imported into blender to texture paint out the cars that got projected onto the road. Finally I measured the crash beam, the bridge, and the height sensor then made a quick animation of how the system works. Let me know what you think, I'll be posting some more videos showing some unique techniques/capabilities and would love any feedback. Thanks!

https://youtu.be/QTeKwB_TEEM


youtu.be/QTeKwB_TEEM
Matthew Blackwood MS PE
Owner: Scanning Cars, LLC
http://www.scanningcars.com
[email protected]
(205)332-9298
Specializing in Meshes, Textured Meshes, and 3D Prints of Automobiles from scan data
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Mike Annear
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Re: Infamous 11foot8 Bridge in Durham, NC - 3d Scanned, Meshed, Measured, Animated

Post by Mike Annear »

Hi Matt,
Very nice !
I am very impressed with the meshing code that you have written for Rhino.
I notice that you are using version 5.0 , have you tried V7 ?
I am curious why you needed to generate a mesh in the first place, and why you did the animation in Blender.
I have done a number of animations of pointclouds directly with Rhino 7 using Bongo to animate the cameras etc.
Then again, blender is free :)
Rhino V7 lets you convert your Poly Mesh to a Quad mesh, then to a lightweight, editable SubD surface.

I really need to learn Python ! (and Blender)
Cheers,
Mike.
Mike Annear
www.mikeannear.com
QLD, Australia.
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Matt Blackwood
I have made 50-60 posts
I have made 50-60 posts
Posts: 57
Joined: Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:13 pm
9
Full Name: Matthew Blackwood
Company Details: Scanning Cars LLC
Company Position Title: Owner
Country: USA
Location: Raleigh, NC!
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 3 times
Contact:

Re: Infamous 11foot8 Bridge in Durham, NC - 3d Scanned, Meshed, Measured, Animated

Post by Matt Blackwood »

Thanks Mike! The meshing is done outside of Rhino using the python libraries pymeshlab and pandas mostly. I have tried Rhino 7, right now Rhino 5 does most everything I need so I haven't migrated to Rhino 7 yet (I actually purchased Rhino 6 but never really used it either). The quad mesher in rhino 7 is very impressive though I should try it with this mesh. I like meshes a lot better - I feel they open the door to what you can do and what programs you can use.

Python is awesome - and it works in Rhino and Blender :)
Matthew Blackwood MS PE
Owner: Scanning Cars, LLC
http://www.scanningcars.com
[email protected]
(205)332-9298
Specializing in Meshes, Textured Meshes, and 3D Prints of Automobiles from scan data
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