Starting and continuing a project...

Development Asset Creation
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Hi Guys,

I’m now trying to understand how to use RC to replace other tools.  It is so fast and very powerful but I have a few questions I just don’t understand.  I have a survey that I did of the interior of a cathedral with a 24mm lens and a Canon 5DMKIII which resulted in 1900 photos that are being used.   

Before I modifying any of the images, the original calculation would use about 1/2 of the photos, ignoring the very dark areas due to the color of the wood and such.  I could see that it identified much of the structure but so much of the detail was gone.

  • Question 1:  Once I run an alignment, how can I close the program and continue from where i left off.  When I’ve closed the program and tried to see the results of the alignment, I see only a semblance of the cloud… certainly not the detail that I saw upon the calculation.

I decided to correct the photos with DxO Optics Pro batch, much better than Lightroom, to adjust the exposure, remove noise and sharpen areas before running them through the process. Then I ran another alignment and an amazingly more precise model appeared.  I saved the file, walked away and when I came back… again, I didn’t see the detail I had seen before.

  • Question 2:  How do you save a project correctly and visualize the full results of what you’re able to see upon finishing an alignment.

  • Question 3:  How can I add, by hand, the additional photos with the registration from other photos so that they are added into another alignment calculation.

  • Question 4: is there a “Setting” that pushes RC’s ability to evaluate photos at a much higher level for registration.

I’d be happy to share the data with an experienced user if they were willing to provide help and can demonstrate a deep understanding of the software and it’s deep flexibility.  There isn’t enough training or strait-forward documentation to cover my questions, nor enough information with examples on you-tube so I would be truly thankful for any help from the community.

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Hi Luxcubed,

quite interesting to read that you got better results with de-noised and sharpened images, which are usually big no-nos in every photogrammetry guide. But I guess it always depends on many factors.

Depending on what kind of LOD you are after, 1900 images @ 22 mpx sound like not very much to me for a whole cathedral. But you said you have been using other tools before, so I guess that it should suffice for your needs.

The rest of your questions concern very basic GUI issues (it’s a bit quirky at first) which are covered very well in the in-app help. It’s a pain to use in search of something specific, but quite good for a first read. What isn’t in the help has been thoroughly discussed here in the forum. Also take a look at the FAQ  :wink:

If later there are any specific questions left, I’d be very willing to help - even to look at the image set if necessary. But I’m sure that you’ll figure it out, especially if you know what you’re looking for.

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Hi Gotz,

Well, DxO is extremely flexible with so many features.  One that I failed to mention was also pushing the exposure up but the combinations that the tool provides are not only provide settings for each prime or tricked out lens you might be using.  I didn’t make any change to the optic settings as it would through off the ability to align.  So adjusting the exposure, noise reduction, unsharp mask and a little desaturation giving me a recipe that could be applied across all the raw images and then exported as 16-bit Tiff collection.

To note… I’ve used the help files to target my exact issues for weeks!  Quite a problem with the license and not being able to solve the problems because of support issues.  There is so little detail to the process of adding registration marks and ensuring they are utilized it’s of very little help.  I use rich and technically deep visualization tools and they live or die based on their documentation and help and understanding from user base.  

Though the options in RC are deep, providing a diversity of examples instead of a statue leads much more to be desired.  I know that there are a number of other people in the studio side that will only use photoscan because there just isn’t time or examples of interior and exterior sets.  I know that it’s slowly being adopted and has been used on some big shows but unfortunately I see photoscan being used at, just rough approximation… 20:1.  

I’ve done extensive reading of the entire help file, the FAQ but the explanations on adding and adding markers between images, saving files and re-opening them and getting WYSIWYG would be what I would expect from any application… not RC so if you can answer that question, please do.

I think RC is fantastic, it’s speed is amazing BUT there are huge gaps in references for use-cases because of the considerably smaller user base or practical application in examples for the interiors or exteriors aside from castles or old historical sites.  All photogrammetry tools have their issues dealing with certain things  so LIDAR is a good safety net or required in some circumstances but providing this MUCH NEEDED support outside of forums is essential to users like me.  I would prefere to use RC over any other tool for set surveys that can be quickly dropped in our virtual production environments but… again, the gap.

The help files ONLY existing inside the GUI, not printable is one of the worst executions of help documentation I’ve ever seen. If the entire help documentation is provided outside the application, please tell me where.  I’ve named the issues specifically above in my first post, it’s not a matter of RTFM, it’s a matter of detail provided.  Unfortunately, I’m not alone here in this opinion but I, with either better support on the forums and provided in just one or two interior tutorials I think it would go along way in bringing in more users and assisting new users like myself.

Thanks for responding.  My questions still remain outstanding, if you can answer the questions I’d be very thankful.  Thanks so much!

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hello

question 1 and 2: the program is currently not able to save completely everything as you can see it when you hit save and close the application, however, you can access everything needed - just select the component with the most images aligned when you run the application again

question 3: to add more images to a project, use Inputs or Folder in the WORKFLOW tab, and hit Align images in the ALIGNMENT tab to create a new component

question 4: depends on what you mean under “a much higher level for registration”

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question 3 (bonus tip): you can also simply drag and drop more images into the project

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Hi Lubenko,

Again, going from the documentation.  All my images are already imported into the project.  I can understand which images are being utilized for alignment.   When you try to add more control points between an image already being used in the alignment and a new image, again adding common control points to tie the new image into the dataset of existing images… then clicking update … those images are still not added.  Again, there is very little documentation on this process at all and no tutorials.  Primarily the documentation is simply just pointing out definitions for buttons… not defining processes.

Drag and drop images into project?  Not sure what you mean by that… the images that are in the project are the only images being used.  In response to “Gots” comment “You’ll figure it out” I can tell you that over the last few weeks there have been a few other people to see the dataset who have used the same sets of tools as I have on a daily basis and they don’t like the UI and with far less exposure to RC then myself they same thing that I have been trying to explain… no you’re not going to figure it out with the documentation.

Could you point out in the documentation how the “Bonus” tip you describe would help.  In regards to the other answers, being the fact that you can’t see or load what you’ve already calculated… we can use incredibly dense lidar or photogrammetry data in far more simplistic visualzation tools and photogrammetry tools and those other tools, very simplistically I might add.

If it actually is there, please point out in documentation to users why, when we open up a working file what you mean by " however, you can access everything needed"  If you don’t have immediate access that is WYSIWYG then that is certainly not the case.  I need to see where documentation provides the process of opening a project in process and how to see the data again without having to recalculate a view.

Again, just to confirm my response to your other point about images.  All the images from the survey were added to the project at the beginning of the project… the entire survey.  If you mean that I can “Drag and Drop” one of the images that is not being used in alignment, look through that camera frustrum and align it somehow inside the 3D view, please explain the process.

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Hi Luxcubed,

sorry to hear that you have difficulties. However, everybody here is working with the same documentation as you have available. I agree with you that it’s not ideal. I also agree with the less than ideal UI, but what is the point of mentioning that your colleagues are also not satisfied? It is what it is and if you want to use the software, there is no way around it. It has been mentioned to me that DEVs are working on a new UI, but they are working on many things so I wouldn’t count on it any time soon.

I shall answer a few questions, even though they are very basic. I am not trying to annoy you with this or belittle your efforts but you can’t expect people here to take you by the hand for general stuff like that.

I guess you have several components in your project. After a new start RC activates the first one, unfortunately. So you need to activate the last one or the biggest one. You do that in the 1Ds window (top left). A component is created by the alignment process. This is also how you add more images, by aligning again. RC will use cache info and present components to speed up the process. I hope this helped a bit to get you going…  :slight_smile:

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you need to place the control point in more images then, more of them may be needed as well,

the Help documentation is being extended continually, including videos, waiting for approval,

there seems to be some misunderstandings in what you asked then

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Hey Luxcubed,

did you just edit your old post? I got a note from the forum for an old post…

Again, I absolutely agree with your assesment of the help/tutorial situation, but there just isn’t anything anyone can do atm, short of making those tutorials ourselves.

Did any of what I said in the last paragraph help you? I understand now that you did prior research, which was not quite apparent in the first couple of posts, I hope you can also see my/our side, to not be able to answer basic stuff for each and everyone anew.

If you still need a pointer, I’d suggest to get in touch directly (phone or voice chat), since it would probably take too long here…  :slight_smile: You can find my details with my name in a search engine, since it’s unique…