HD Scans Church Ruin Questions
Bendinggrass
Posts: 1,367
in The Commons
Wow, this is pretty impressive.
I don't understand in the sense of this: It is a scan, so would this be made/recorded with a HD camera?
I am confused because the promos show a clay render, and a wire form..... does this mean the images were somehow changed into a digital "item?"
Anyone who can review this kind of work would be appreciated for your knowledge on this.
Thanks.
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Photogrammetry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry
It looks as if they were created by a technique called photogrammetry, which converts multiple high-resolution photographs (sometimes supplemented by LIDAR scans) into a mesh, then generates texture maps from the images that can be applied to that mesh. So what you get would be a 3D model with textures, just like the other products you can buy in the store -- but it was made using scanning and conversion software rather than by modeling the structure in 3D (although I suspect some clean-up in a 3D modelling program is often required as well).
A few creators seem to make content this way. For example, I suspect that ShaaraMuse3D over at Renderosity uses this technique heavily.
The technique has some limitations. One is that the output is almost 'too' photo-realistic, so products made this way may not always work well with products created using traditional modeling and texturing techniques: the difference between the two is too obvious. It may also create very large meshes that may require a powerful machine to handle. And there can be problems if the original captures didn't include enough source images from particular angles to allow the software to model things properly. In that case you can get distorted or underdetailed meshes, or textures that are 'stretched' or blocky.
So interesting. Thanks to both of you.
Quixel Megascans is a good example of this type of thing
If I'm reading it right... 1 million polygons down from an original 290 million.
Yeesh... I wonder what that file size is.
These are the instances where the product's file size needs to be included in the product information.
An interesting tutorial on how to use photogrammetry software to create simple props...
Edited to add... One of the programs mentioned in the video, VisualSFM is no longer available (as far as I can tell) so following the video exactly as described is not possible, but aside from the VSFM part, it's still informative.
The video I linked to below is more relevant at this point.
That you have to use 12k diffuse textures to make the detail passable makes me very leery of just how resource-intensive the set is.
Is there any free software to try this kind of thing?
Sorry, I didn't realize that VisualSFM was no longer available...
Try this video instead...
Links for the software involved...
Meshroom: https://alicevision.org/#meshroom
InstantMeshes: https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes
Blender: https://www.blender.org/
Also, you can use you smartphone camera for this.
Meshroom
edit, McGyver was quicker
Maybe I'm just not looking closely enough, or have a less critical eye, but based on that one promo, even the 4K version looks passable for most uses.
https://www.3dflow.net/3df-zephyr-free/
It does give the option of 4k textures, which can be decimated if required. The load indicator is that it uses 1M polygons, which is a lot. However there are many other models with high loads and the polycount can easily exceed the polycount from the church model. For example, Etherial Goddess Hair https://www.daz3d.com/ethereal-goddess-hair-for-genesis-8-females is, according to Mooncraft who checked here: https://mooncraftrp.com/index.php/2020/10/22/top-10-hair-genesis-8-models-for-slow-computers/, 851,324 polygons and Charli Hair (in Charlotte 8 Bundle) is 530,312 polygons. So, the polygon based load on the computer will be 30% less from the church model than 2 characters with those two hairs.
Regards
Richard.
Not to forget that some G8 characters have SubD at 5 by default...
I don't understand the panic about polycount, as in general the polycount is not an issue - Have people been playing games too much?
On lower RAM machines, poly count can be a significant feature. Once you're up to 32Gb RAM, them poly counts in the couple of millions should not be a problem, but at 16Gb or less it's another story. When I only had 16Gb in my machine, I did get the machine to struggle with the 500k+ poly Capri hair even when I had switched to smooth shaded as the view port display method and a 'Clay material preset' applied to eradicate textures. The hair, one figure and a lightweight background and it was laggy. With the current 24Gb, it's less so. And my machine, though 8 years old now, is about the speed of a current mid-range PC. That's why I personally bother somewhat about poly count. Other people may find things different on their machines.
Regards,
Richard
Generally scenes can contain up to about 4-5m polygons before I start worrying about poly count vram usage (about the 1-1.5gb mark). I would interested to hear from someone who has purchased the set what their total vram usage was for the 3 different texture resolutions. I purchased the same PA's Abandoned Restaurant but returned it as out of the box it required, if I recall correctly, 8gb of vram just by itself. I had tried to remove anything not absolutely required, and reducing certain textures but it just wasn't usable how I wanted to.
Based on the promo images, the lower resolutions would only be passable for me as blurred and/or distant background.
RE polycount - I'm not so much worried about polys...it's super giant textures that can really blast the VRAM requirements. Now that I've moved to the 3090 that's less of a concern, but on the 1080TI it most certainly was, especially with the heavier resource requirements of simply opening and using DS 4.15 (compared to older versions like 4.11).
VisualSFM is still available from CNET: https://download.cnet.com/VisualSFM-64-Bit/3000-6677_4-75870524.html
A subd 3 Genesis figure is a little over 1 million polygons... that's not a huge amount for a scene, relatively speaking.
Usually it's textures that are a problem.
Well, there's only diffuse and normal maps listed so it might not end very heavy even with 12k maps.
rendering without the fog prop, default camera setting, 16:9 UltraHD, 12k textures:
Geometry memory consumption: 33.413 MiB
Texture memory consumption: 2.988 GiB for 12 bitmaps
Lights memory consumption: 6.504 KiB
Materials memory consumption: 62.156 KiB (GPU)
As stated, the polygons are no issue at all (roughly 34 MB). The textures are more of an issue, but roughly 3 GB should be okay even with a GPU with 8 GB
Appreciate the info - thank you very much.
That's not bad at all for 12k textures.
The max. I can do on my 8GB RTX 2070 super (as reported by the log) is 5.7GiB (=Total VRAM usage just under 8GB), which includes geometry, textures and the working space - Working space is 1.75GiB if there is plenty of room for it, if it falls below 1GiB, it will effect the rendering time. The lowest I have seen without dropping to CPU was around 300MiB.
Photogrammetry is indeed a very interesting technology. The inability to capture hard surface objects with shiny metal surfaces is a big turn off for me as I would like to convert some of my 100+ scale model 1/24th & 1/18th diecast cars into 3D objects as well as real life cars including my own vintage 1960 Corvette. I am aware of using powder and dust on shiny objects however I've been building and collecting scale model cars for over 50 years and have knocked off a delicate part or even destroyed it (mirror, antenna, decals, etc) when trying to remove dust. I can only imagine the response I would get at a classic car show if I asked the owner of a vintage car or hot rod if I could dump some dust or powders over their car so I could photograph it.
The technology must evolve to include shiny objects.
RealityCapture is now free to download and you are charged each time you export a model. 3DF Zephyr has a free version but has a limit of only 50 photos which is not near enough for a car. I did try the trial 14 day version of 3DF Zephyr Lite which has a photo limit of 500. I was quite impressed with 3DF Zephyr.
Meshroom is also free but is quite slow compared to the speed of RealityCapture or 3DF Zephyr.
I would purchase 3DF Zephyr Lite if not for the issue with shiny metal surfaces.