Testing Different Stitching Softwares, pt 2. evaluating 3DF Zephyr

Last post I talked about trying out alternatives to Agisoft Photoscan, and realized the processing speed and quality was like night and day. I was looking at RealityCapture (RC) and 3DFlow Zephyr. Unfortunately both had extremely high price points for their license, but at that point I had tasted luxury and decided I NEED it.


The highest licensing options (for uses in aerial drone photogrammetry) were in the $5,000-15,000 range. However, there are also more limited licenses that step down in price, the lowest being the independent freelancer level which was a subscription service in the range of $50-100/month. I contacted both companies about the possibility of an education license.

3D Zephyr got back to me, they actually offer a free student license for 31 days plus an option to extend the license based on the class/project. I immediately applied for this. When I installed I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this is an evaluation of their aerial product, which is the most powerful and is normally $5000.

Oh gosh, this software is beautiful. First-- it calculated a better model in an hour than Agisoft did over a weekend.


Comparing the two, Zephyr was able to solve the negative space between the figure and her arm rest, plus it handled the missing photos from her head a little better.



The texture it generated is insanely gorgeous. It can bake 4k, 8k, or 'unlimited' resolution.


If this was able to generate this quality model from a relatively bad photoset, just imagine what it can do with a properly prepared and shot subject.

Other notes:

It does not do 'chunks' like in Agisoft, but you can merge entire workspaces together. Literally drag+drop the file into an open workspace. Zephyr will look for manually marked 'control points' to stitch together.
It can also work with both photogram and laser scan data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prSJhyWOsNM

There are some promising automasking features.

Zephyr can work with 360 cameras!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SDa2GfFCUg

Known issues/limitations:

 Zephyr is unable to edit UVs. The model must be unwrapped in Maya, Blender, Zbrush and then reimported + rebaked.
It cannot bake normals-- the high and low poly models must be exported and baked in Substance Painter or xNormal. (I guess people still use xNormal!)


I think I found my stitching solution for this term, and if all goes well I may look into applying for an extension to cover my thesis. I am a little concerned about post graduation, in which I may look into RC's freelancer license (at a very reasonable $40/month), but I will have to cross that bridge when I get there.