I am very new at this, and I’m just doing this as an experiment for myself.  But my goal is to be able to model a human body with about 6 photos taken around a person.  I don’t need the type of detail that is found in the morgan freeman bust, but I need enough detail to be able to measure the body parts later...such as the length of the arms, the length of the neck, the girth of the neck, etc.

I am really new to this stuff and was hoping there was a step-by-step tutorial somewhere that will explain to me how to do one example of this.  Because I am not in the CAD business, or the VR business there is a steep learning curve for me, and just getting a tutorial that walks me through doing one model would be really helpful.  Does anybody know of such tutorial that I can start with?

Well you want to make sure that you have a model that will be incredibly still for this. I remember years ago Realviz had a tutorial made by Didier Muanza of a models head that came out very well. This might be a good start if anyone at Autodesk knows where to find this.

First of all, good luck to you. I’ve not had much success with IM so far, so something like this seems like a chalenge. By the apparent lack of information and learning resources, and the question/answer ratio in this forum, I don’t think I am alone with my experience in IM. Greg, if you know of any IM more tutorials beond those in the help, please add some links, I’m sure many of us would like to learn more.
As well as a very still model, it may help to have one that doesn’t mind being drawn on, as in some reference points at strategic places to help place your locators. I’ve seen where people have drawn wireframe topology onto a body to aid modeling. Here is an example from 3D.SK, they specialise in reference photos for character modelers.
.Link. Contains nudity BTW.
Although this may upset your textures, I think it probably necessary to accuratly place locators in consistant positions between shots. If you are taking textures from the photos, you may want to keep the marks minimal, like dots or tiny X’s that can be painted out, rather than a full wireframe mesh as shown.

I’m very interested about modeling human body from photos with IM.

I’ve tried to search the tutorial suggested but I didn’t find it.

Autodesk...can you show us how to do it??

In the manual the point cloud modeling is very short and lack of details, it should be good to post some updates and add infos.

Thanks in advance

I think it’s great if you can show us a “step-by-step” tutorial with imagemodeler.

I’m trying to use the points cloud technique, but I can’t find the “automatching” feature suggested by the manual.

look at this new technology from autodesk: http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/photofly/

That’s interesting. The world coord and measure tools look like IM.
I’m not that keen on modeling in IM, I use it just to get some reference points to bring into Max. In fact the best use I have found for it is as a camera matching utillity, not it’s intended purpose, but it works.

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I’m a point cloud! Just having a play with Photofly. Drawing the X’s helped, on the first attempt there were none and the results were not so good. They help the automated stitching by adding clearly defined texture and are usefull for placing reference points to aid modeling. I stuck a piece of paper on the wall behind with a bit of a grid drawn on it to set the UCS and scale.

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Nice pointillist headshot! Looks like your avatar. ;)

That figures, they are both supposed to be digital versions of me.
I’m amazed it worked, bearing in mind I had to take the pictures myself, you can’t see my outstretched arm holding the camera. Keeping you head perfectly still while taking a number of self portraits from different angles is not so easy. By some miracle they were in reasonable focus and framed OK. I’m sure you could get much better results with a separate photographer and model. Possibly the whole body, though it may be hard for someone to be completely still while enough photos are taken to do that. For the head shot I pressed my head back against the wall to help keep still, but for the whole body that would restrict rear shots, the model would have to be free standing for the photographer to cover all angles.
It would be nice to see this technology combined with Project Helix so you could get the point cloud with it’s colours into Max. I can get it into Max via an FBX from IM, but the points come in as dummys at an unuseful size with no colour and are a real drag on the viewport, unlike the points you get from Helix.
Much of the emphasis on these two projects seem to be around architecture, but I’m seeing potential from a VFX point of view. The above was an experiment in using it for character reference, for example creating digital doulbles of actors. But I also mentioned how I have used IM as a camera match utility for live action/CGI composite scenes. The point clouds/reference points can then be used to model stand in geometry for camera mapped matte/shadow/reflection objects. AD need to consider and develop the technology for these uses too. A step further in that direction would be to intergrate it with MatchMover. It does do a similar thing in a way, if you think of each photo as a video frame and the path between them as the camera trajectory, then you get the 3D point cloud.

I want to use ImageModeler to create a Human body too, I want to use Create Mesh to create it automatically,but I encounter a problem. It is just listed below:
How many Markers that I need to Place to make the menu item ‘Scene->Create Mesh’ become be able to used from gray one. because no matter how many markers I placed, this ‘create mesh’ menu item is always gray, that means it can not be used!

You need to calibrate the scene first, it can help to put a calibration grid or similar device in to help this like I have here.
Be sure your model did not move at all, or it will never work.
I would also suggest you take a look at Project Photofly, linked above. Since this thread was last used they have released a new version 2 which will create a textured mesh for you. I have been experimenting with it here.

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