Capturing Photoscans: Everything I Can Think of.

Do you know what kelvin your lights are? I know you said daylight but just wondering which end of the spectrum they're closer to...5000k-6500k?

Noah Guthier

If I want to integrate this technique in a movie: is it possible to animate a scan or to rig for instance a scanned person ?

Fransoa

HAHA!! Yes!! I orbited him while filming for a long time, until he got bored and looked somewhere else, then I used all the frames from the 1 second he was staying still for the scan, which is why one side of him looks okay, but the other's kinda blobby :P

Ian Hubert

This is great!! Is the dog from Party Tug a photo scan too? How'd you get him to stay still?

Concerning the "use low iso" Yes by rasing the iso or gain you arent getting more information from the sensor youre only multiplying it. However most of the time youre not recording the raw signal comming from the sensor, espacially when using a phone camera. The dynamic range of the sensor is mapped on to the dynamic range of your file format. During this process to shrink the dynamic range some unimportant information is left out. But how does the camera determin which information is unimprotant ? By looking at the exposure of our image. Cameras are in general optimised to take pictures of humans. Human skin is usally exposed at 68% - 70% exposure (for white people, values for poc my vary). Around the skin tones the the dynamic range usally remains uncompressed, information in shadow or extrem highlights are exceeded . Same goes for digital file compression algorithms such as jpeg, they get rid of most shadow detail while skintones usally get by fairly untouched. In short dont underexpose your pictures because youre afraid of noise or high iso values, you might be able to preserve information from dynamic range compression or digital file compression, even if youre not giving new information to the sensor by rasing your iso or gain. For instance i got perfectly noise free scans with reality capture using 6MPixel Jpegs at Iso 6400 even if their offical tutorials suggest to stay as close to Iso 100 as possible. I suppose during their texture reconstuction the noise from the different pictures is averaged out. In case I am horribly wrong about the technical side of all this and just lucky with my scan. Please help me to capture better scans by correcting me.

pretty impressive

Maury Rosenfeld

For android 3D Scanner (icon is white with a blue lens). Works without lidar, S8 and S10 it works OK. can't complain, could be better though.

Hey People, I found something very useful in Terms of Delighting 3D Scans! It's the Agisoft Texture De-Lighter. It's free, really useful and just does what it says.

I am not sure if you know but for Iphone I use Filmic Pro app.. it gives you access to Log and other DSLR functions on your iphone. Fixed iso, fixed parameters all you need.

Bill is a holocaust denier, but he's a good guy. :)

I did a bunch of photoscanning already but I feel I still learned a few bits and bobs. Always nice to see creative people share their process.

Manuel Grewer

But seriously, the hundreds of photogrammetry tuts out there do NOT mention the need to keep each successive photo in context with the previous! Like an anchor point for the software, it makes a world of difference. Thank you!

VideoSlice

Lol the cube with a butt randomly 3/4 of the way through

VideoSlice

This was fantastic. I love the delivery of information and especially appreciate the brief tangents you veer off into. The mushroom discovery and subsequent Googling was *chef's kiss* Thank you for the format and the 3D scanning tutorial all blended together, it is very much appreciated!

Thanks for the shout out old friend. You have not forgotten me completely LOL 🤣

Zap Andersson

Hi Ian! thanks for all the insights! Just one question about polycam. Are you using the same pro account from your iPhone in the web upload thingy, or you had to sign up for 2 different accounts? I tried to use the pro account I use on my iPad on the web but I couldn't... it opened just a fresh-no-scan-history-free account...

Pablo Nicolas

Others have mentioned using a circular polarizer to reduce inherent specular reflections, but I have had tremendous luck on object scans using a cross-polarization technique. Basically, you place a linear polarizer over your light source, then 'tune' your circular lens polarizer to eliminate almost 100% percent of the specular reflections, allowing you to capture only diffuse textures. This works best with a single light source, so if you film against a black backdrop and use a ring light around your lens, then place your object on a turntable, you will also have the added ability to capture a shadowless representation of your object, since all of the light is essentially coming from the same perspective of the lens.

Informative and fun to watch. Love the spirit of Tom Waits in the vocals.

cdilla

Thank you again sir! Such amazing wisdom. The cut scenes make me want to see your version of The Lighthouse where you play every character!

Ian, have you tried using a motorized turntable? I see a lot of people doing that and having good results.

Nic Musser

Awesome tips n tricks Ian! Thank you! And lol@crazy cutscenes! :D

Dyrgrip FX

Glorious intro a reference to MYST ?

German Bauer

Hey, for those enterprising, frugal individuals, you can download the source code to a macOS photogrammetry app and a companion image capture iPhone app. You do need Xcode 13 to build it and Monterey/iOS 15 to run it, but who doesn’t have an M1 Mac mini lying around? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/creating_a_photogrammetry_command-line_app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/realitykit/taking_pictures_for_3d_object_capture

awesome, thanks! Do you have any good way to unwrap the model and get a decent looking texture? Isnt there a way to force reality capture to do like a cube or camera projection? All my scans have just terrible UVs no matter what I do....

Filip

Is Kaitlin off-screen with a fire extinguisher?

Doug Brown

Amazing video! So inspired to try myself. So I actually also have the sony A7III and the 14mm GM lense. whats the aperture setting you used? Or did i miss that in the video?

OMG I'm not even a quarter way through and I'm just howling with glee here. Oscar Worthy indeed!

Stijn Windig

Super good video. Thanks for the bucket of info. It was nice to get some more detail on how others are doing the scans and an idea of where you can make compromises to fit your preference. Quality vs quantity, etc. I haven't tried shooting with video yet. So that was good to see how you would do that quickly using blender and pop it onto polycam. I did have one thought, since I live in a similarly rainy area (Vancouver). I haven't been scanning since the summer because of the rain. Turning everything all wet in the scans...I wonder if there's anything to be done about that. I guess just changing material settings? ...or I need to build some rainy scenes.. *Oh and that next video sounds really exciting.

Stephan

Also, before you started with the 14mm scans....was that a cube with a butt inside Blender? 😉

How about a large white tent/dome around your scanned object to even out the light and kills those specular highlights & reflections?

I chuckled at the clothes changing all the way through.

Felicia White

Damn Ian, this is an awesome video!!!

This is really good information, because I'm thinking of getting into photoscanning with Polycam so i could do some reality into some CG shots, plus other assets with live action stuff allows me to have this hybrid of 2.5D and Live action. But thank you for assets and everything too :). Also, I'm fairly new here and the Discord server. P.s if spray paint can't be a liable solution you can use tape to cover up any windows ;)

worth it for the song! :-)

This video it's pure gold thanks Ian<3 Also those first and last minutes are definitely what makes this subscription absolutely worth it

I have just started to watch this video, and i don't need to see no more. Academy, you better give this men the fucking oscar he deserves. Well played Ian, well played.

Thank you so Much! very helpful

ash katchum

Ah thanks Howard! That's a really interesting idea! I'll go pick some up in the near future and give it a shot.

Ian Hubert

Very cool! Have you considered snagging some Matte transparent spray coat to spritz your reflective models with before you scan them? On something cool like that metal gun it might ruin the look on the original object, but if the end goal is to use that as the basis for a 3d scanned model, then getting a super-clean, non reflective finish might be worth it. Just a thought!

Howie Day

This is incredibly helpful! Thank you so much!! 🙂

Mario Taylor

YES! I want to give that a shot. Actually! I have a variable ND filter, which I think is just two polarizing filters- curious to see how it goes! If nothing else, it could mean that I just scan glossy things outdoors.

Ian Hubert

You might want to look into circular polarizing lens filters and polarizing light gels/films to remove specular reflections! Your overhead light setup might not work well with it, because of how the polarizing physics works, I'm not entirely sure. But small shinier objects lit from the sides would be perfect. Outdoors without the gels, you can still control what reflections show up a bit, super useful and cheap. It does reduce the total amount of light pretty significantly, but could be worth the trade off for certain scans. I use them to photograph paintings without any glare.

He's so upset and I don't even think he knows why.

Ian Hubert

I get into it a bit in the video, but the Lidar actually isn't that useful for most scans (not high enough res- great for reference, though!)- ALTHOUGH, if you take pictures through certain apps, it'll do a quick lidar scan that it'll use for correctly scaling the final scan, which is pretty darn handy, actually (it also uses the accelerometer or something so everything is imported "upright")) What's really been knocking my socks off is Apple's Object Capture system, and until last week you had to have an iphone in order to access it. Polycam just added a web interface so you can use Object Capture without having an iphone, which is great! Because yeah- I'm not the biggest fan of iPhones either.

Ian Hubert

the little flashback face at 15:11 almost made me choke on my food

Zeke Faust

I am not much of an iPhone fan, but when I discovered that it has a lidar scanner, I started to think of getting one. The ability to scan stuff whenever you want is so cool. So excited to watch this when I get home.

Lightning

The answer to all my problems Ian thank you! Can't wait to watch

Mahdi Poursamad

A tutorial is not complete without war flashbacks :D

Blake Rizzo

YES! THANK YOU FOR THIS!!!