The Cemetery Hill - proof of tech

One thing that I like about working with scanning is that it is easy to work iteratively and BIG to SMALL. It's easy to quickly generate a sparse pointcloud of the entire space (esp with 360 cameras), then refine per object to smaller, denser pointclouds. Then lastly, each asset can be optimized and made beautiful for a realtime environment. 

I feel good about ending out the term with a workflow that makes sense and can show results in just a couple of days. The Cemetery Hill project is just at the beginning, but the proof of tech can already be presented.

Putting it all together

On my fourth day working on the new dataset from the graveyard-- this process is so fast. 

In my last post I experimented with using control points to merge multiple chunks of data. There were two methods (same steps, different order of operations) and I predicted that recalculating the entire workspace with all cameras included would produce better results. I did that, turned up the settings to high details, and let it process overnight.

As you can see, the results are gorgeous 😍

To compare, here is the dense pointcloud processed with default settings and without recalculating the entire workspace. 

And from another angle

Merging Multiple Scans with Control Points

I have begun again with a new location. This time, atop a hill in a cemetary.

Pointcloud Meshing with Seperations, pt2

I spent a day building a low poly model for the smoker deck environment. I UV unwrapped everything, then imported everything (as a combined .obj file) into Zephyr. I followed my documented steps from before on reprojecting.
The results? Lots of issues. I am kind of frustrated.

Pointcloud Meshing with Separations, pt1

Something unique to scanning a room scale environment is the process of meshing the pointcloud into separated pieces. I decided to run some tests with re-projection on a smaller object.

In virtual environments it's important to remember that we are building a fictional set, and not an accurate representation of the world. Typically, the background is a skydome. There may be elements on a billboard/card. As objects are closer to the foreground, they require more accurate models and texture details. 

More on De-lighting

Delightful! GET IT.

Getting Game-ready Models out of 3DF Zephyr

As impressive as Zephyr has been, I found a few painpoints that required the model be exported out into a different tool and brought back in to continue. In fact, this whole process required jumping back and forth between several softwares.

For this write up I used my Lichen Angel model. There were a couple of places I wanted to spend more time on, such as cleaning the mesh, but my priority here was documenting the steps. I hope to improve on this workflow.