Hi, Thanks for posting. Have been using Metashape for a few years now, but tried the camera tracking in Blender recently. Think there is mileage in learning it well. I use Solidworks, but there is lots of AR potential through blender.
I'm using Meshroom and PCV for mine. You can camera track your sequence and export it automatically to alembic with your extra views for the point cloud and make some really cool effects!
Fantastic work and thanks for an excellent tutorial. Your previous videos have inspired me to create something similar with point clouds but I have not succeeded. Using video and motion tracking has not struck me before, so I will try it sometime. I have not used photogrammetry before but will try it. To create point clouds, I use an Intel realsense D415 depth camera that I think has a good price and a good quality for my purpose.
My last comment got removed haha!😂😂 really enjoyed this video @Keir Chaggar-Brown Keep up the good work!!! my favourite part is where you converted to mesh🤪
Thank you so much for sharing!! I converted my model to cube, and came to material preview, but it seems missing materials, the pointclouds are all in gray, how can I fix it? Thank you!
I was wondering if we take multiple scans with multiple cameras at the same time.. if we can combine the the data and truly have a 3D environment. I have 3 iPhones with Face ID.. I just need a way to place the cameras front back and side over a rail or something to record a the same time .. any suggestions?
I am planning a tutorial on how to use a Xbox kinect in blender to have real time capture, you would need a few to do 360, not sure if that's what you're talking about though.
@KeirChaggarBrown great and inspiring series! I'm trying to put together a tutorial series about hyperlapses, and using photogrammetry for stabilization is a section I'd like to do. I've written some software for aligning image sequences with music; I heard your call for collaboration at the end of a few of your videos, and thought I'd reach out. I'm ashamed to admit that I've been a lurker on YT for years and only now beginning with interacting ☺ I'm curious to know how your point clouds with geo nodes library is coming along in Blender 4. Any plans for any tutorials in that direction? Peace!
Hi. Thank you for perfect tutorial. I follow the tutorial step by step. But when i convert iy , my all texture is gone. Is there a step I have taken? Thank you!
It should be added as a vertex colour, can you see it on the object, should be called Col. Add that in the shader nodes. Hope that helps, send us a message if you get stuck :)
Do you know how to use the generate pointcloud from mesh in PCV? It gives me points but no color from the UV texture applied. I guess Im missing something.
Hi Keir, great work and thank you for the tutorial. i have the problem that after converting my pointcloud to cubes. there is no texture anymore. could it be a problem with blender 3.0? or is this feature only in the paied version of the vizualizier?
Make sure you have the correct material applied to the object, Col should be connected as an attribute in the shader nodes. It definitely works in 3.0 and the unpaid version
Cheers, if you converted to a mesh, then the colours will be stored in the vertex colours, so that needs connecting in the shader graph. If you converted to a instancer, the colours will be in a UV texture, but this will only work in cycles
@@KeirCB Can you please breakdown the steps for me? I have been trying for a week and not getting the colors after converting into cubes. whats the option here in blender to get the colors right back. I'm new to this :(
@@safwanshafquat6842 No problem, so, in point cloud visulaser you convert to a cube. This is going to store the colour information in the vertex colour attribute of that object. You can access the vertex colour in the shader editor, add a vertex colour node and type in 'Col' (this is the attribute created by point cloud visulaser) this is all you should need to get started. If you have any problems from there in happy to help.
do you know if there's a way to displace points with an object that we can move across the point cloud? because if i want to displace it displaces the whole point cloud, how do you do this in parts without separating the object?
Then I would definitely recommend colmap since using the CLI allows you to really play around with the parameters. If you don't have a Nvidia GPU try multi view environment. Hope that helps, good luck!
I have just started using Blender and have been experimenting with the camera tracking and laser scan data sets. I also found it to be super difficult to scale and orient the track path to the 3d point set. It seems like this could be done by snapping the track markers to a few locations within the cloud? Great video BTW! thanks for sharing!
@@KeirCB Perhaps placing empties within the point cloud near locations that you used for tracking. Then constrain the empties to tracking markers to set scale and orientation of the track to the cloud? I am not so familiar myself. Always learning.. I'm currently involved in some other projects right now so don't have much time to dabble. Seems worth the while though.
I'm using Metashape and anytime I import my model to blender and change it into an object it loses its color (it's just white). Does anyone know how to fix it?
The colour is stored in vertex colours, this should automatically be called Col. This attribute can be using in the shading nodes as a colour input. If you are using instances or a particle system, the data is stored in a UV texture. Use this for colour input, however this will only work in cycles. hope that helps
Keir, I see that you ran MVS in windows, something that I haven't figured out how to do. How did you manage to do that? Did you compile it with Visual Studio, or downloaded the binaries? I already have the binaries but I haven´t been able to get past the uploading of my images. Honestly, the info in the website for running it on Windows is sparce at least to my own appreciation. Is there any chance that you can upload a small tutorial on how you did it?
I'm using MVE not MVS. I've not worked with MVS since my initial experiments. What's your requirement for MVS as there are alternatives that have working prebuilt packages
@@KeirCB sorry for the mistake: I was trying to type MVE - multi Visual environment, but the slide keyboard "corrected" it. I want to get the pointcloud from a series of pictures that I took, but I can't get past the point in which I have the images joined in the MVE screen. I don't know what to do next, or if I have to execute the next part of the process via CMD...
I'm not that familiar with MVE anymore, but the commands I used where quite simple, of you've used something similar or the defaults, it should work. So it could be your images. Are you familiar with how to take photos for a point cloud
@@KeirCB I do. I've worked with scanner laser technology and photogrammetry for historical monuments ten years ago, but back in the day software weren't that powerful. Right now I was trying to survey a small single store fassade of 25 mt long with a set of 15 photos taken from the other sidewalk and another set from middle street.
Hi there, eevee doesn't support the option 'from instancer' on the texture coordinate node, this option is only available in cycles. If you are just using vertex colours and no instancing, I don't see any reason for the colours not to show. Hope that helps!
Hey there, I need help... If I convert it to Particles (and not cubes) I cannot find how to bring the color (it does not work the same way as with cubes, where the color is in a vertex node). Can anyone help me ??
SOLVED OK so what I did is convert it twice : once in particles and once in cubes. Then in the shading editor of the particles and I added Input>Vertex Node and selected Col from the Cubes.
Hey Keir, just wondering, the point cloud within 'Point cloud visualiser' won't interact with any lights you add to the scene until you convert it out as it's own object? For example if I had in a point light to move through the point cloud before conversion, the light won't change the scenes illumination unless converted? Thanks
Yes, if I understand correctly, point cloud visualiser cannot display lighting from blender. Although there are shaders inside PCV that can show shadows and other faked lighting. To do anything complex you will need to convert
Hi there, eevee doesn't support the option 'from instancer' on the texture coordinate node, this option is only available in cycles. If you are just using vertex colours and no instancing, I don't see any reason for the colours not to show. Hope that helps!
@@KeirCB I think I may have misunderstood. My current workflow is: (1) create empty axis object (2) load .PLY file (3) Click on `convert` with type cube and set it at 25% (4) Check the colors box and hit convert Now I thought that there would be a automatically generated material on the new object that is created, but that is not the case. The converted object does not have any materials. Hence, when I change the viewport shading to material preview the cubes stay white
@@Wobbazu Hey, just tested this, and a material is definitely generated when I convert. So I'm not sure what your issue is, apart from new versions of blender and PCV, I would assume the only other issue is your original .ply not having correct colour values?
@@KeirCB I'm not sure either haha. It could be that I am using the github version of PCV, but it would be strange since they also mention converting with colors in the manual. It might indeed be my .PLY file since I am using SiteScape on my iPhone 12 pro to create a point cloud. However, when I load the .PLY into MeshLab or CloudCompare colors seem fine. So all in all I have no idea what the problem is. Thanks for your help anyway!
@@Wobbazu @Default Ive used that version in the past and it worked, so the github version should be fine. Maybe try exporting the .ply from cloudcompare? I assume the opengl render in PCV can visualise the colours?
I use a Sony A7ii there's no great reason to use this particular camera, but I made the decision on wanting a middling resolution, if it was super hi Res you get more noise and more pixels to process. Especially helpful for lower light PCs
hello mate, Please can you help me When I convert the point cloud to Cube The color is still white only if I convert them to the particle system the color goes back to the normal but I want my points to convert to Cubes with the original color can you please answer me
When i converted the plugin creates a shader with col. In the video I switched to shader preview in the viewport, once the plugin had completed, so I would check to see if the vertex colour was created
@@KeirCB Thanks for the swift reply! Also does the paid version of this have faster conversion times or does is it just dependant on the point cloud model size? Cause considering if the paid version would be worth it as I want to use Cycles to render instead of the included PCV animator
The fast conversion mostly depends on the model size, and it is still very slow of you convert 2+ million points. I wouldn't get the paid version just for fast convert
@@KeirCB Cheers mate, one last question i know this gets asked a lot but i've followed your responses when people asked why isn't the colour showing. I exported my file from CC, converted in blender 2.80, once converted no colours. I can see there's a "Col" shader under the Vertex Colours tab but I don't know how to connect that in the shader editor? I can see it in Solid mode but not rendered or LookDev (Material Preview)
If you use Meshroom for your scan, you can import the camera positions into blender. That might help with aligning the cameras.
Very good tutorial. Probably the best one I’ve seen on point clouds. Hope you are still creating man
Thanks for sharing, got a cool result after a bit. Excited to explore with it more.
This is super interesting, thank you for sharing. I would love to get started exploring this.
Hi, Thanks for posting. Have been using Metashape for a few years now, but tried the camera tracking in Blender recently. Think there is mileage in learning it well. I use Solidworks, but there is lots of AR potential through blender.
My first point clouds were done with metashape but I wanted to move to free programs
@@KeirCB yes, good when it's free - better to recommend to others
I'm using Meshroom and PCV for mine. You can camera track your sequence and export it automatically to alembic with your extra views for the point cloud and make some really cool effects!
It would be great to see what you are taking about. Could you explain what you mean by data views? Cheers
@@KeirCB extra views like your camera track image sequence vs your whole photoscan image set. Sure! I've gotta make a tutorial soon.
@@Ianmation oh cool, I'll be really interested to see, let us know when you have a tutorial out!
@@Ianmation Did you ever do the tutorial? ;)
I've got a better manual method now, if you are interested I could update that section of my workflow
Thank you for posting. The end result is fantastic 👍 Some what dream like and feel nostalgic.
Give it a go, it's not too hard!
Beautiful work!!
Fantastic work and thanks for an excellent tutorial. Your previous videos have inspired me to create something similar with point clouds but I have not succeeded. Using video and motion tracking has not struck me before, so I will try it sometime. I have not used photogrammetry before but will try it. To create point clouds, I use an Intel realsense D415 depth camera that I think has a good price and a good quality for my purpose.
Does that camera have colour or is it just black and white?
this is so cool, thank you
Thanks Keir for sharing... this is great. it would be possible to hear more from you?? Thank you in advance
I have just added my email to my about page. It would be great to hear from you
Super cool method.
Love it! Thanks for sharing your workflow and inspiring me to try this out myself.
thank you for sharing really interesting work! :)
Thanks a lot! I will definitely give it a try soon :)
My last comment got removed haha!😂😂 really enjoyed this video @Keir Chaggar-Brown Keep up the good work!!! my favourite part is where you converted to mesh🤪
Thank you so much for sharing!! I converted my model to cube, and came to material preview, but it seems missing materials, the pointclouds are all in gray, how can I fix it? Thank you!
amazing！why the color are all gone after convent to cube ?
I was wondering if we take multiple scans with multiple cameras at the same time.. if we can combine the the data and truly have a 3D environment. I have 3 iPhones with Face ID.. I just need a way to place the cameras front back and side over a rail or something to record a the same time .. any suggestions?
I am planning a tutorial on how to use a Xbox kinect in blender to have real time capture, you would need a few to do 360, not sure if that's what you're talking about though.
@@KeirCB yes exactly what I’m saying.
@KeirChaggarBrown great and inspiring series! I'm trying to put together a tutorial series about hyperlapses, and using photogrammetry for stabilization is a section I'd like to do.
I've written some software for aligning image sequences with music; I heard your call for collaboration at the end of a few of your videos, and thought I'd reach out.
I'm ashamed to admit that I've been a lurker on YT for years and only now beginning with interacting ☺
I'm curious to know how your point clouds with geo nodes library is coming along in Blender 4. Any plans for any tutorials in that direction?
Peace!
Got another video coming early next year, with more cell division stuff. Send us a email if you have anything specific you want to discuss
nice, struggling to find your e-mail address. Wanna post it here, I'll hit you up and then you can delete it?
@@memorylapse it's on my about page
Hi. Thank you for perfect tutorial. I follow the tutorial step by step. But when i convert iy , my all texture is gone. Is there a step I have taken? Thank you!
It should be added as a vertex colour, can you see it on the object, should be called Col. Add that in the shader nodes. Hope that helps, send us a message if you get stuck :)
@@KeirCB Thank you very much. It works 🖤🖤
Do you know how to use the generate pointcloud from mesh in PCV? It gives me points but no color from the UV texture applied. I guess Im missing something.
Try a colour attribute on the mesh rather than a texture. You might need to bake it depending on what you've got set up. Hope that helps
Hi Keir, great work and thank you for the tutorial. i have the problem that after converting my pointcloud to cubes. there is no texture anymore. could it be a problem with blender 3.0? or is this feature only in the paied version of the vizualizier?
Make sure you have the correct material applied to the object, Col should be connected as an attribute in the shader nodes. It definitely works in 3.0 and the unpaid version
@@KeirCB thank you, the problem was that i didnt connect the vertex color
Whoa! Thanks for showing how you do your projects. I am facing a prolem with the plugin. after the cube conversion it doesn't show the colors back.
Cheers, if you converted to a mesh, then the colours will be stored in the vertex colours, so that needs connecting in the shader graph. If you converted to a instancer, the colours will be in a UV texture, but this will only work in cycles
@@KeirCB Can you please breakdown the steps for me? I have been trying for a week and not getting the colors after converting into cubes. whats the option here in blender to get the colors right back. I'm new to this :(
@@safwanshafquat6842 No problem, so, in point cloud visulaser you convert to a cube. This is going to store the colour information in the vertex colour attribute of that object. You can access the vertex colour in the shader editor, add a vertex colour node and type in 'Col' (this is the attribute created by point cloud visulaser) this is all you should need to get started. If you have any problems from there in happy to help.
Thanks a lot ! It worked
@@KeirCB i did what you said and still black after rendered
Looks good, but tried to follow along - even slowing things down does not help. Would love to comment, more, but....
do you know if there's a way to displace points with an object that we can move across the point cloud? because if i want to displace it displaces the whole point cloud, how do you do this in parts without separating the object?
Use geometry nodes
do you still recommend Colmap for photogrammetry reconstruction ? thanks again for the great videos !
Yes for this process yes. However depending if you are making art or not, different process will be better. Let us know if you need any help
@@KeirCB it's for art purposes - this impressionist style of capture really inspires me!
Then I would definitely recommend colmap since using the CLI allows you to really play around with the parameters. If you don't have a Nvidia GPU try multi view environment. Hope that helps, good luck!
@@KeirCBthanks a lot for your tips! I've also sent you an email to the adress that is associated with your YT channel. Cheers!
Wow, thanks for sharing! How to morph between 2 pointclouds? Is that possible?
Yes, using geometry nodes, that is definitely possible,
@@KeirCB Thanks, will try to figure this out!
I have just started using Blender and have been experimenting with the camera tracking and laser scan data sets. I also found it to be super difficult to scale and orient the track path to the 3d point set. It seems like this could be done by snapping the track markers to a few locations within the cloud? Great video BTW! thanks for sharing!
That's an interesting solution, is that using constrains? How would you snap points, I'm not too familiar with some bits of blender. Cheers
@@KeirCB Perhaps placing empties within the point cloud near locations that you used for tracking. Then constrain the empties to tracking markers to set scale and orientation of the track to the cloud? I am not so familiar myself. Always learning.. I'm currently involved in some other projects right now so don't have much time to dabble. Seems worth the while though.
@@haww3rPwr interesting, I'll give that a try next time I'm working with a track, my next piece tonight doesn't use camera tracking
I'm using Metashape and anytime I import my model to blender and change it into an object it loses its color (it's just white). Does anyone know how to fix it?
The colour is stored in vertex colours, this should automatically be called Col. This attribute can be using in the shading nodes as a colour input. If you are using instances or a particle system, the data is stored in a UV texture. Use this for colour input, however this will only work in cycles. hope that helps
Keir, I see that you ran MVS in windows, something that I haven't figured out how to do. How did you manage to do that? Did you compile it with Visual Studio, or downloaded the binaries? I already have the binaries but I haven´t been able to get past the uploading of my images. Honestly, the info in the website for running it on Windows is sparce at least to my own appreciation.
Is there any chance that you can upload a small tutorial on how you did it?
I'm using MVE not MVS. I've not worked with MVS since my initial experiments. What's your requirement for MVS as there are alternatives that have working prebuilt packages
@@KeirCB sorry for the mistake: I was trying to type MVE - multi Visual environment, but the slide keyboard "corrected" it.
I want to get the pointcloud from a series of pictures that I took, but I can't get past the point in which I have the images joined in the MVE screen. I don't know what to do next, or if I have to execute the next part of the process via CMD...
I'm not that familiar with MVE anymore, but the commands I used where quite simple, of you've used something similar or the defaults, it should work. So it could be your images. Are you familiar with how to take photos for a point cloud
@@KeirCB I do. I've worked with scanner laser technology and photogrammetry for historical monuments ten years ago, but back in the day software weren't that powerful.
Right now I was trying to survey a small single store fassade of 25 mt long with a set of 15 photos taken from the other sidewalk and another set from middle street.
@@hebermoreno7963 weird, could you send over the script you are using and I can test it on my end
Hey,
Thanks so much for sharing. Awesome workflow.
For some reason im not getting any color in my cubes. Do you have ideas why that could be?
Hi there, eevee doesn't support the option 'from instancer' on the texture coordinate node, this option is only available in cycles. If you are just using vertex colours and no instancing, I don't see any reason for the colours not to show. Hope that helps!
Hey there, I need help... If I convert it to Particles (and not cubes) I cannot find how to bring the color (it does not work the same way as with cubes, where the color is in a vertex node). Can anyone help me ??
SOLVED OK so what I did is convert it twice : once in particles and once in cubes. Then in the shading editor of the particles and I added Input>Vertex Node and selected Col from the Cubes.
Do you need the camera tracking before going into Blender, if I just want to zoom into the point cloud? I'm probably missing something here.
You only need the camera track if you want handheld motion. Just animate the camera in blender if you want a simple zoom
Hey Keir, just wondering, the point cloud within 'Point cloud visualiser' won't interact with any lights you add to the scene until you convert it out as it's own object? For example if I had in a point light to move through the point cloud before conversion, the light won't change the scenes illumination unless converted?
Thanks
Yes, if I understand correctly, point cloud visualiser cannot display lighting from blender. Although there are shaders inside PCV that can show shadows and other faked lighting.
To do anything complex you will need to convert
@@KeirCB thanks for the quick reply. I just purchased the plug in and will give it a go!
hi wonderful tutorial! just a question: after converting, my material preview doesnt show anything- is some marker off perhaps? thanks!
Hi there, eevee doesn't support the option 'from instancer' on the texture coordinate node, this option is only available in cycles. If you are just using vertex colours and no instancing, I don't see any reason for the colours not to show. Hope that helps!
@@KeirCB thanks so much for such a prompt reply! hm could it be because i seem to be missing the vertex normals?
I wouldnt think vertex normals would effect this method of shading? What program are you using to create the points?
@@KeirCB reality capture
I'm not familiar with reality capture, are you exporting to .ply?
When I use convert to generate the cubes and change viewport shading to material preview, no colors are shown. Am I doing something wrong?
It depends on how you've made the material for the object, are you using the default material generated
@@KeirCB I think I may have misunderstood. My current workflow is:
(1) create empty axis object
(2) load .PLY file
(3) Click on `convert` with type cube and set it at 25%
(4) Check the colors box and hit convert
Now I thought that there would be a automatically generated material on the new object that is created, but that is not the case. The converted object does not have any materials. Hence, when I change the viewport shading to material preview the cubes stay white
@@Wobbazu Hey, just tested this, and a material is definitely generated when I convert. So I'm not sure what your issue is, apart from new versions of blender and PCV, I would assume the only other issue is your original .ply not having correct colour values?
@@KeirCB I'm not sure either haha. It could be that I am using the github version of PCV, but it would be strange since they also mention converting with colors in the manual. It might indeed be my .PLY file since I am using SiteScape on my iPhone 12 pro to create a point cloud. However, when I load the .PLY into MeshLab or CloudCompare colors seem fine. So all in all I have no idea what the problem is. Thanks for your help anyway!
@@Wobbazu @Default Ive used that version in the past and it worked, so the github version should be fine. Maybe try exporting the .ply from cloudcompare? I assume the opengl render in PCV can visualise the colours?
Did render it with Eevee or Cycles?
Cycles, use persistent data and it's not too bad render times
What camera do you use for the photogrammetry ? and is there any good reason you are using this one in particular ?
I use a Sony A7ii there's no great reason to use this particular camera, but I made the decision on wanting a middling resolution, if it was super hi Res you get more noise and more pixels to process. Especially helpful for lower light PCs
hello mate, Please can you help me
When I convert the point cloud to Cube
The color is still white only if I convert them to the particle system the color goes back to the normal but I want my points to convert to Cubes with the original color can you please answer me
When you convert to cubes a vertex colour should be created called Col. Add this in shader nodes. Hope that helps
@@KeirCB i faced this problem just when i convert them for cube and in your video the colours changed automatically in 4:59 this is what im asking for
When i converted the plugin creates a shader with col. In the video I switched to shader preview in the viewport, once the plugin had completed, so I would check to see if the vertex colour was created
@@KeirCB thanks a lot i will trying to make it
@@KeirCB it works ! thank you so much
Hi there, is the process using Colmap essential?
No, any point cloud producing application will work, other photogrammetry softwares or lidar
@@KeirCB Thanks for the swift reply! Also does the paid version of this have faster conversion times or does is it just dependant on the point cloud model size? Cause considering if the paid version would be worth it as I want to use Cycles to render instead of the included PCV animator
The fast conversion mostly depends on the model size, and it is still very slow of you convert 2+ million points. I wouldn't get the paid version just for fast convert
@@KeirCB Cheers mate, one last question i know this gets asked a lot but i've followed your responses when people asked why isn't the colour showing. I exported my file from CC, converted in blender 2.80, once converted no colours. I can see there's a "Col" shader under the Vertex Colours tab but I don't know how to connect that in the shader editor? I can see it in Solid mode but not rendered or LookDev (Material Preview)
I'm using Blender 2.80 version with old GitHub and I just cannot find the vertex colour node
Hey! Thanks for tutorial! Please, check your email..
no se entendio nada, malisimo video.
Happy to help