Taking Inventory

Today was the first day I got access to the ACELab and was introduced to the library of capture equipment that is available to the department. I say 'capture equipment' because this includes DSLR cameras, 360 cameras, 3D scanners, the motion capture studio space, and the list goes on. In particular, there is this workstation with hefty specs.

The side panel is removed, I assume to show off his three glowing NVIDIA graphics cards. 

I am sitting under my good friend Val's thesis poster, which she presented at SIGGRAPH (and other places) three years ago. I remember that in 2020 SIGGRAPH will be in Washington DC. I hope to submit my work that year, it is rare to have the conference hosted on the east coast. 

In chatting with my independent study advisor Nick, we discuss the plan for what to accomplish this term and land on a still fairly vague idea to begin researching photogrammetry process. He pulls three laser scanners out of storage. One of them, the desktop NextEngine scanner, is familiar to me from undergrad where I worked on digitally fabricated sculptures as a part of my fine arts minor.  

I end up with a question that doesn't have a readily available answer-- What is the advantage of laser scanning over photogrammetry? For one thing, lasers do not capture color data, so to make up for this many laser scanners have a camera (or cameras) built in anyway. Yes, lasers can be more accurate, but the cost of a high res device easily goes into the tens of thousands, where the cost of a high definition camera might stay affordable at a professional level for the same output resolution. 

I think I have arrived at my first experiments: to find the best method of acquiring scan data, comparing photogrammetry to the available laser scanners. When I say best, it is important to note that every scanned object/space is different and there is no one size fits all. Every method will have a different accuracy vs time vs cost. According to the Star Wars Battlefronts team, they emphasize that they use a combination of modeling methods including photogrammetry, scanning, sculpting and box modeling depending on the needs of the space. 

This week I hope to flesh out a better idea of an end deliverable to work towards during this term, however tomorrow I know where I will start.