Initial Impression from me is wow, I just installed and was just playing around and from using realflow before it seemed quite similar to load the points and then mesh etc… I need to read the manual if I could find it… but just clicking around and messing around being an autocad user for a long time and 3ds max, faro scene, recap etc… it seems to flow nicely, it doesn’t seem overwhelming like max or maya on first inspection to a new user.
I don’t like the navigation much yet, I keep looking for the equivalent of 3d rotate and set the pivot point where ever you click, after I find this I’m sure I will like it much more…
I have been working with this point cloud for a while now and this is the most complete I have ever seen it meshed… really gives a way better sense of the overall scene etc… I have a lot of learning to do but as far as first impression goes… well done… I hope to get a lot more comfortable with the tools and see what this baby can do…
It just looks a bit blobby to me but Im sure its all in the settings that I pretty much know nothing about.
We posted a temp. link on my personal server - this is totally WIP, and we are in the process of changing some of the UI, so things are in flux: rabop.com/temp/Sequoia_Beta/
Under Options, you can switch between Standard and Alternative mouse controls. We ship with Standard mode on by default. Check out the docs for details.
Unfortunately, the “pivot around the mouse click” feature is not in yet, but it has been requested by other users, so it is on the ToDo list. Right now the pivot can be placed indirectly by pressing Z for Zoom Extents (this places the focus point at the center of the selected object), or directly by right-clicking a point cloud or mesh surface and selecting “Focus Camera Here” from the blue crosshair menu (this preserves the current camera-point of interest distance). Panning shifts the point implicitly, so if you placed the focus point somewhere, then moved the camera to the side, it would be shifted too. However, it is currently not being visualized in the viewport, so it is not quite obvious where it is (we hope to have this added together with the Orbit Around Mouse mode feature).
Extract watertight single-sided mesh from point clouds – critical to any M&E pipeline
Mesh reduction with ability to keep detail on non-flat areas or interactive retopo feature to significantly reduce polygon count (similar to Mudbox Retopo, Zbrush ZRemesher and particularly Autodesk Memento) – possibly control auto reppo with primitives as masks for area/algorithm variation across model.
Ability to project textures from panos onto reduced/retopo mesh or imported cameras see new point ‘5’
Automatic UV or PTEX creation of normals map, displacement map, ambient occlusion map, and/or bump maps allowing the user to work with lower poly count, but maintain detail
when the point cloud source is PhotoScan support the import of aligned cameras fro re-projection.
This would be useful even when the source isn’t PhotoScan. We’ve been known to collect geometry with a scanner then use PhotoScan just to calculate camera poses so they could be used for texture reprojection.
i have tried a little the software, and read the manual (not so in depth).
The first impression is that the loading of files is very fast in comparison with some other softwares, the UI is clear and not so difficult to understand, and the navigation (when found the function to toggle the mouse with “Maya like”) is good, and the possibility to customize the layout and save it or go back to default with a click is very useful.
Don’t have found how to switch the orientation of axis (Y to Z, and vice versa).
Don’t have found how to export the 3D model with UV map and textures.
It is possible to clear isolated points or points that we don’t want from the point cloud?
It is possible to implement basic instruments for mesh modeling, and refining?
Finding the right calibration for mesh creation is not so easy and often the scans are not so good to cover enough the geometry.
It is possible to implement a slicer tool that create section in elevation and horizontal plane from the point cloud to obtain a dwg cut of scanned objects (vector lines for technical drawings)?
I apologize for points that maybe are already ok, that i don’t have found because of my beginner knowledge.
Thank you very much for the positive reinforcement!
Go to Options > Configuration and enter in the search field “Up” (or “Coordinate”, or “System”)
Select the “Z Up Coordinate System” entry and set it to False.
Press OK to close the dialog
Restart SEQUOIA (this is the only option I know that requires a restart of the software)
RESULT: The coordinate system will be switched to Y-up right-handed (Maya style), and the green axis on the home grid will turn blue.
Currently we support PTex and UV map generation (with some known bugs in the latter to be fixed in the next build) from Image Projections only. I am going to write a chapter about it in the Help in the next few days…
May I ask what the benefit would be? Most programs support vertex colors, and baking the vertex colors to a map would produce an uglier version of the data.
Currently it is somewhat possible (but cumbersome) by using multiple Point Region Of Interest gizmos to include/exclude areas. We have big plans for point cloud segmentation and filtering in v1.1 after the initial release, but at this point we assume the point data comes from a different application that has performed the filtering already…
For v1.0 we are considering adding a Mesh Cleanup operator though that can remove detached mesh fragments with volume/surface/face count below a certain threshold. This would clean up stray blobs after the meshing, and quite interactively.
It is on our wishlist, but not on the v1.0 roadmap. The only procedural operator that can affect the mesh in the current version is the Relax operator. Right now we assume the geometry will go into another 3D application for modeling / retopologizing / mesh tweaking.
We had to do something like that visually at Siggraph to analyze the shape of a mesh vs. its point cloud, and I had the same thought. I am going to log it on the Wishlist, however it is unlikely to happen for v1.0.
Thank you for the answers and explanation, i have to go in deeper knowledge of the software.
We are not very interested in vertex color export (very useful in Sequoia for visualisation). In some cases what we need, is the possibility to export a file with the finished model textured with the image projection. So we can import in Cinema 4D for only scene integration and rendering, without manage the model a second time.
In general, for us the best would be that we can manage the files that we receive from the guy of laser scanner(normally a SCENE Faro file) directly in one software, without to go in another for this, then another for that, and so on… to obtain a finished 3D model(in our case for Cinema 4D), or the vector file to import in CAD(in our case for Archicad).
I don’t know if this is possible…
several month ago we had to pause our beta testing because of the fact of double sided geometry and our massive point- / polycounts.
are there any alternative meshing operations in sequoia yet? or do you plan to integrate them soon?
i know that’s a really tough one - but it’s so essential!
