Road to version 4.5 (Clementine)

[Roberto]

The beta is out today, and anyone can apply

You can follow the dev. status here: http://devstatus.3dflow.net/wiki/Main_Page

[cam3d]

Nice! I'm having an issue with the generation of normal maps - I don't seem to be able to select a lowpoly model! (Second text field isn't giving me any options - I have two meshes in my project, one high and one low.

[Andrea Alessi]

Hi Cam! You need a lowpoly textured mesh

[Nedo]

I wanted to play around with the new mesh detail enhancement filter(s), but where can i turn it on/off, or play with the settings, is it in the photoconsistency optimization?

[Andrea Alessi]

Hi Nedo!

yes, it's in the photoconsistency optimization. It is actually turned off by default in the close range preset, but you can change it (or apply it with an additional photoconsistency filter).

Please note it's not tuned yet so you may have to play with it a bit It's the "Enhance Filter" slider (by default set to 0).

[sam3d]

Has the generate Dense Point Cloud option moved to Workflow->Advanced or this normal for Pro/Aerial?

[Andrea Alessi]

Hi sam3d,

yes, in all versions now the standard workflow has been streamlined, so it is SfM -> 3D model (that internally does dense cloud and mesh) -> Textured mesh.

This is just a workflow / Ui change: internally there are still 4 steps. You can still generate the Dense Cloud from "Workflow -> Advanced -> dense point cloud generation" and then proceed again from the same workflow menu.

[sam3d]

Gotcha thanks Andrea. It confused me a bit.

[artsomnia.art]

I made my first test in Clementine and realized that the texture map turned out much-much better as in the previous version (I took a blink just on the color map, still did not tested the new normal and displacement tool). I did not saw any patch notes that is texture oriented. Could it be that simply the new UV unwrap algorithm made such a huge improvement? (I used default settings all the way till texturing in both versions to do not influance the income by costume settings, but it also could be that default settings changed )

[cam3d]

Hi Cam! You need a lowpoly textured mesh

Makes sense! Totally forgot UVs weren't generated yet. Would be good to have a warning that it needs textured mesh and/or greyed out as an option until textured mesh created

[Andrea Alessi]

As far as I know (but Roberto may correct me here ) aside from the related changes to the new UV-packing algorithm, nothing else changed on the texture generation

[Roberto]

Yes, I confirm that it's the only improvements in the texturing phase. However, the texturing is influenced by all the other previous step of the pipeline, and a better camera orientation or mesh will give you also a better texture

[artsomnia.art]

Thanks Andrea and Roberto! In this case the new UV packing algorithm works well and probablly as Roberto mentioned it, it's influanced by other changes in the pipeline.

wow guys! I more and more amazed by doing my tests! Befor it was no matter, that I chosed "closup" construction method, Zephyr always calculated out the pointcloud as if I would looking for an area workflow. But now with Clementine it's super clear! Incredible great! Better close up recogniser than in RC!

I would have a question: Do Clementine works for the beta testers as a cloud rendering server? I generated a dense cloud+mesh to testing out the normal and displacement map content, the work was done, no other workflows were running inside Zephyr, I made a break and when I arrived back my pc was super hot, my GPU was on 100% (RTX 2070) used by Zephyr, but there were no actual workflows on my side. It was a bug? Or we, beta users are building up a kind of a cloud render farm for Zephyr till we are testing to let it test, calculate, solve this and that and with that helping the development? I attach the image how it happened:

[artsomnia.art]

edit due to my post above: I made a bunch of tests tonight and had to realize, that simply the highpoly mesh visibility rendered out on my viewport the reason of my constant 100% gpu load, no matter if it's static or I'm moving the camera around. If I change the viewport render to - "show point cloud only" my GPU load immediatelly falls back to 24% (RTX 2070 Gainward phinix on Nvidia creator ready driver) Right now I'm waiting for a cleaned dense pointcoud reconstruction, it was not an easy ride to import it back, the original exported mesh had a lot of shells had to fix it in netfabb and than do the cleanup in zbrush. I tried to close the mesh inside Zephyr by using watertightness (in prior version it went well) but now it loaded up all my 32 gig ram to 100% + my ryzen 2700x to 100% as well (all cores were on constant 100%) and it stucked in the solving stage for 30 minutes. I could not even abort the process, had to shoot down Zephyr. I had a few crashes, I made a bunch of screenshoots about "strange" scenarios. Can you please send me a mail where I could/should upload my beta reports?
But all in all, I really like what I see! Where things works out, there I see perfect end results! I never ever saw this detailed mesh generation in any photogrammetry software with this low polycount! My 8 mill mesh ended up, that first I was sure that it's around 30-40 mill... I shocked when I saw that it's just 8 with such detailes. That beeing sad... but unfortunatelly the mesh had quite a lot of degenerations, but I will report all of them and I hope that they can be solved