Hey cool! I just saw photofly, http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/photofly/
I saw the demo was the what use to be the Realviz building I use to work at in France and the file format is RZI the IM 2009 format! Very cool! I am extremely glad to see Autodesk moving in this direction.

I’ve been having a play with it too. Interesting stuff. Though to get it into Max I have to load it into IM, then export an FBX. If I use DWG you lose the cameras. Would be nice with it’s own FBX export option.

Yes, very cool stuff! Like a bionic implant for IM2009…

In this incarnate IM would be looking more like photomodeller scanner or photosynth?

Wonder what the accuracy of this data is. Could this be spelling the end of LIDAR?

On the point of LIDAR does anyone know how to pull that data into a 3D app and model with it.
Its all good getting this cloud data but how would you convert it to a accurate model?

The Helix looks very interesting, I think there is a big whole in the market for manipulating point clouds, most of the software that exists focuses on the needs of engineers. Thanks for the link!

Photofly still needs a dense point generator before it competes with laser scanners. I have been doing this w/ photosynth and bundeler datasets and multi-view stereo reconstruction, it wouldn’t be too hard to convert the rzi format to something PMVS could read.  grail.cs.washington.edu/software/pmvs/ I am sure it is on the autodesk radar though, photomodeler scanner has had this feature for years. The one thing that is still lacking is normals for the points, you do get normals from laserscanners, and many meshing algorithms take advantage of this. Although from the looks of the photofly splat rendering it looks as if they are getting normals since the splats seam to align w/ the surface, so maybe it is there.

the cyclone is a $28,000 software. and the funny thing is that engineers just take a slice of what is needed and junk the rest. With $200,000 price tag on scanners LIDAR is prohibitively out of reach for most people besides oil and energy clients.
I have little experience with photosynth but might be good place to start.

Although I was wondering once you have the data into the software. How would you clean up the points and build a legit surface from joining all the points.
Its all good having the points but snapping points a million times over is somewhat scary.

I was trying to capture a multi-stitched solution for greater detail.
Did a pano of 50 pictures or so taken from 3 sides of a hut and tried to get them into IM for photogrammetry experiment. The number of crashes was more than my patience so I ditched the plan.

I reckon I like the upload option option and result delivered at the other end option.
Will have a go soon enough and see what lies ahead.

I am still trying to figure out the ideal workflow. PMVS is great because it also cleans the points. I have been using the VR Mesh demo, (functional for 2 weeks) it can do some automated cleaning and meshing. Poisson does very good meshing if you have the normals. Looks like autodesk labs has a few tools, too, Helix http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/3dsmax_pointcloud/ and shape extraction for Autocad http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/shape_extraction_autocad/

interesting tools.
Has anyone tried Alice lab products?
They too seem to have a photo modeler Scanner like product with photostruct.

The Helix looks very interesting, I think there is a big whole in the market for manipulating point clouds, most of the software that exists focuses on the needs of engineers. Thanks for the link!

Would be nice to see the two projects intergrated, to get PhotoFly clouds into Max via Helix.
When I import a cloud into Max from PhotoFly the points are all Point Helper objects and makes Max impossibly slow. But with Helix clouds the Max viewport is OK to work with.

The one thing that is still lacking is normals for the points, you do get normals from laserscanners, and many meshing algorithms take advantage of this. Although from the looks of the photofly splat rendering it looks as if they are getting normals since the splats seam to align w/ the surface, so maybe it is there.

Would be great to get a mesh, with the texture from the Splats.
The other potential I see for this techonolgy is for MatchMover, See my comments here to see what I mean by that.

Though to get it into Max I have to load it into IM, then export an FBX. If I use DWG you lose the cameras. Would be nice with it’s own FBX export option.

In the newer version, the RZI won’t load into IM, not good. But it will export to Max now.

http://www.scannerkiller.com does something like this I think. Anyone had any dealings with it?
The resolution looks nice.