Devin Johnston Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 I know there are some programs on the market like 3DSOM Pro that can take a bunch of pictures of an object and turn it into a 3D model but will any of them allow you to create a 3D model of an interior/exterior space? I know Autodesk has Image Modeler 2009 but when I tried it a few years ago it was very difficult to use and I'm not sure I want to try and do a real project with it. Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 This is a concept that I have been meaning to try, but I am not sure it would produce results that are worth anything.... Photosynth > Photosynth Point Cloud Exporter > Max Point Cloud Importer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted October 7, 2010 Author Share Posted October 7, 2010 Believe it or not Autodesk has a similar tool called Photofly that does do some of what I'm looking for. It creates a point cloud out of your photographs and you can export that data to a .dwg file. I think it has potential but the points created are just points in space and not solid geometry so I'm not really sure what I can do with it. There does seem to be a way to add reference lines on points that you locate manually and I think with enough points you could rough out some basic geometric shapes. I'm still looking for a more direct simple way of converting photo's to models so if anyone else has any ideas please post them. http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/photo_scene_editor/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonathan Sanchez Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 You know... I don't know of any programs that do automatic 3d models from 2d sources... however, and you probably know this already Devin, both sketchup and 3ds have a camera match feature where you can generate 3d models from pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted October 8, 2010 Author Share Posted October 8, 2010 both sketchup and 3ds have a camera match feature where you can generate 3d models from pictures. No I'm not aware of this feature in Max, where is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 You know... I don't know of any programs that do automatic 3d models from 2d sources... however, and you probably know this already Devin, both sketchup and 3ds have a camera match feature where you can generate 3d models from pictures. I think the camera match just does what it says, it matches the camera, but I dont believe it creates geometry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted October 8, 2010 Author Share Posted October 8, 2010 Oh camera match I though he was talking about some new program, yea it only creates a camera based on points you locate on a photograph but it's very old and doesn't work well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 it's very old and doesn't work well. A bit like me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonathan Sanchez Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 A bit like me. lol...good one. No it does not generate geometry... u have to draw it yourself. Sketchup also has a camera match function.. believe it or not it has been pretty useful for me to create models out of pics... see more here: https://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=94920 so you can also use 3ds' "camera match" the same way... it has worked for me before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted October 8, 2010 Author Share Posted October 8, 2010 I am aware of those tools Jonathan I thought you were talking about something else, I'm looking for something different that would generate geometry based on photographs. I've looked at several different options and Autodesks Photofly software was the closest thing I could find, it is possible to create geometry but I haven't been successful doing it yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 (edited) There does seem to be a way to add reference lines on points that you locate manually and I think with enough points you could rough out some basic geometric shapes. I'm still looking for a more direct simple way of converting photo's to models so if anyone else has any ideas please post them. http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/photo_scene_editor/ I am guessing you saw this tool for AutoCad also? ...it pulls geometric shapes from the point cloud, but looks like it will need a fair amount of work to get something usable. http://inside-the-system.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/07/new-tool-to-convert-point-clouds-to-real-geometry.html I also found this shareware tool. I think it is for point cloud geometric extraction, but not 100% sure. http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/ There are also several commercial products that look like they are capable of generating high quality geometry from clouds, but the ones I found appear to start around $20,000. EDIT: ..this one is a little cheaper. Again though, these are just stabs in the dark at quality. I am guessing it largely depends on the quality of the point cloud to start off with. http://www.vrmesh.com/store/order.asp Edited October 8, 2010 by Crazy Homeless Guy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted October 8, 2010 Author Share Posted October 8, 2010 Travis what were the ones you found that were really expensive? The Autocad point cloud tool looks promising, I'll give it a try once I've exhausted the probabilities with Photofly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 Hmmm....maybe they are not $20,000. I was basing that figure off of this article. http://aecmag.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=343 But this one has plug-ins for AutoCad and Rhino that look affordable, and from th efew screen shots looks pretty good. http://www.pointools.com/buy.php This one works directly inside of Max... No word on price. http://www.leica-geosystems.com/en/Leica-CloudWorx-VR_84059.htm This is one of the ones I was looking at that I think is expensive, but looks like it does a stellar job. But then again, it turns out I was inaccurate about the $20,000, so maybe this one isn't to much either. Look at the PDF for what I mean about quality. It takes a wheel and breaks it all the way down to a nurbs model. http://www.geomagic.com/en/products/studio/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted October 8, 2010 Author Share Posted October 8, 2010 That last one looks nice, they all seem to depend on a pretty accurate point cloud which means you'd have to have the objects scanned. The Photofly software does generate a point cloud but you can't adjust the density of the cloud so I don't think it would work very well with these other software's. I've made some progress with Photofly, I've been able to export some geometry to 3D Studio but there are issues. While I can export simple poly lines which gives me a reference to the location of certain objects unless you can capture all of the room you are in you will only be able to generate a partial model of the area in question. All of the geometry so far isn't orthogonal once exported which might be due to camera distortion but could be cleaned up with enough effort. There's really no chance of getting any detailed model out of the program unless you spend lots of time working with it, part of the reason I wanted to do this was to save time. I'm pretty sure I could model the entire room in less time from scratch so this looks like a dead end for now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonathan Sanchez Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 forgive my ignorance.. but don't point cloud require a 3d scan of the object? .... would it work from 2d photographs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted October 8, 2010 Author Share Posted October 8, 2010 That's what this is, the program uses the photo's you've taken, stitches them together automatically and then it generates a point cloud based on the information in the pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonathan Sanchez Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 oh i get it now.. went back and read earlier posts... that's cool.. let us know how it works out Devin! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christiansltd Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 We use our Trimble laser scanner to point cloud land features, I can export to civil cad and make a land model to use in 3ds max etc. I am sure it could be used on buildings etc as it's the same principle when we do those. I will have a play over the weekend, if so it could be excellent however the hardware cost us £70,000.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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