Can photogrammetry be used at all for help creating good daz products?
Drekkan
Posts: 459
in The Commons
Being it has a reputation for not being quite as basic as most think, can it be used for daz commercial products or at least used to create parts of commercial products for example a good quality prop/environment/scene to sell on the market?
I get its been around for a few years now but I I've seen some impressive 3d works of scenes and props modified and/or improved from photogrammetry shots people have gotten and wonder if it can be utilised more for daz.
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As far as I know, Polygonal Miniatures' products are all created through photogrammetry.
There are a few products, like what Gordig pointed out that use photogrammetry in the store. Personally I feel there are pros and cons to the method. I have downloaded and tried lots of photogrammetry models from many places, including sketchfab and imported them into DS. Most have issues like incomplete parts and artifacts, but I do like the concept and in rare instances when done right can be pretty impressive.
I do a lot of photogrammetry, but not for DAZ products, primarily for mapping (for archeology). I have done a few projects that could be used in DS.
Yes, it can be used, but it's not as easy as it looks. There are some things that can be done fairly easily with photogrammetry, some things can't be done with photogrammetry (i.e. smooth glossy surfaces). If you want to do scans of rocks, cliffs, etc. getting the proper lighting to minimize baked in shadows is also a big issue. Plan on going out on overcast days when shadows are minimized. Photogrammetry also creates incredibly dense meshes, so you will need a good program to reduce mesh density and create normal/bump/displacement maps from the dense mesh to be used with the decimated mesh (there are free open source products that can do this). Typically there will be a fair amount of manual editing of the model to remove artifacts/noise in areas where your photos/subject don't resolve cleanly during processing.
Some of the free and/or open source photogrammetry programs can do and acceptable to outstanding job depending on your skill and knowledge of the program. A lot of the commercial products are easier to use, but the good software can be rather pricey. If you use software that runs on your own hardware rather than a cloud service, be prepared to have your computer tied up for many hours processing the model. The longest I've had a model take to run was 72 hours (though I could easily make it take longer). But, it can be a lot of fun to create a very exact and realistic model of something from the photos. There are some good videos on youtube that can help get you started. Alice Vision (MeshRoom) is a really good free/OS option to see if you enjoy it (and a cell phone or other camera).
Photogrammetry is one of those things that if you enjoy doing it, it could be worth learning to create products for DAZ or game content. If you don't enjoy it, it really won't seem like fun at all. Also keep in mind that you will be limited some what when creating content for sale - there are things that would not be legal to sell 3D models of (i.e. a 3D model of a bronze sculpture that is not public domain).
I see yes. Thx for the lowdown. Besides nature shots of foliage/trees/plants etc is there anything else it could be used for creating commercially regarding Daz?
That's a good question that I don't have a good answer for right now. I've just always thought of doing rocks, cliffs (have a drone), and landscape projects. Public buildings may be possible if the law where you are allow it. Other than nature/natural objects, I can't think of anything right now.
I'll give it some thought and if no one else gives you any good ideas, I'll see what I can come up with tomorrow.
Are public monuments legal to do?
It depends.
It's called Freedom of Panorama and differs depending on the country that you're in.
Wikimedia Commons has an explanation of it.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama
at the bottom of the page there are shortcut links that explain the situation in various countries.
what is the situation regarding indoor items and scenes and props and such? everyone seems to be talking about outdoor things but what if you were building a kitchen scene and say you wanted to add something like a microwave from your own real kitchen. Would you have to leave the brand of it on or remove it or?! would it be allowed at all? or maybe an item like a cup or something. What about something like a physical DVD sleeve cover? would the movie image picture on it be technically copyrighted and not be allowed to be in a commercial product? thx.
Some stuff looks good, such as Shaaramuse's stuff on Rendo. I think a lot of their landscapes have photogrammetry elements (rocks, logs, etc).
Some stuff looks shamefully bad. I've seen some clothing sets pop up in the store that were made from photogrammetry and I just don't see WHY because holy crap. Ick. The most recent that I've seen was a leather jacket and the lapels are oddly stuck together (I assume because of the scan, it wouldn't have been able to contemplate two separate pieces overlapping), so there's like fake shading to create the illusion of separation. Yeah, no. Please just leave the photogrammetry to static objects.
It was fun reading those Wikimedia pages... Even when you own the building, you don't have the right to make a 3D scan of it...
With the same logic, you don't have the right to make a 3D scan of yourself either, since you didn't design or make yourself, you would need to ask for a permission from your mom
Ignoring any potential copyright/IP issues with using photogrammetry for say a coffee cup or a microwave, in most cases trying to use photogrammetry for these would either not work, or simply be more labor intensive than just modeling them in Blender, Hexagon, etc.. Smooth homogeneous surfaces are a non-starters for photogrammetry. To create the model, the software must be able to identify unique points (pixels) on the object in multiple overlapping photos. So for example a black microwave will typically have large areas of glossy black surfaces. This will result in a very unique, but totally worthless blobby model. Those glossy black surfaces provide very little unique patterns/details for the software to work properly. In fact, it is best to avoid any glossy surfaces completely. For example, a granite counter top (or highly polished statue) will have a great texture to work very with photogrammetry, but the glossy surface will have reflections of background objects that will cause erroneous pixel correlations between photos. Like the microwave this will result in a model that can be rather entertaining, but a totally worthless representation of the original object.
Many objects around the house are simply not great subjects for photogrammetry (much easier and faster to make the model in a modeling or sculpting app). Again, not addressing any potential IP issues, things like stuffed animals, soft furniture, mat finished figurines/statues, organic forms, mat finished decorative cup/bowls/plates all can work quite well. Very flat surfaces are usually better off being created in a modeling app. Rocks, boulders, logs, highly weathered wood surfaces, rock walls, etc. are great subjects for photogrammetry because they require a lot of work to model and texture by hand. However they are ideal for good photogrammetric models (most rocks modeled and textured by hand look fake, unless the artist is extremely good, but then they can be very expensive due to the cost of the labor).
Looking around my house, there isn't much of anything I would select to use with photogrammetry for sale. It could make a very realistic towel to hang on a rack. There are a few antique items that It could work well, like several old antique books, some antique toys, but most non antique items either don't have surfaces conducive to photogrammetry, or would have potential IP/copyright issues.
I've thought about using it to model a roast chicken in progressive stages of being eaten - for the whole Charles Laughton Henry VIII vibe. First model the whols chicken, then rip a leg off and model both the chicken and the leg, take a bite out of the leg and model it again, etc...
One of these days.
I think itwould work well for that. Could be a very useful set of models.
I wouldn't bother waiting for an official reply, I'd just assume that anything that is an identifiable commercial product should not be reproduced... even if DAZ said it's okay with them, why bother expending the effort if there is a chance of there being legal issues... companies have vast numbers of lawyers looking for unlicensed use of their products... the odds may seem small that you get selected for scrutiny, but when you do, anything that made it worth your while evaporates... and there is no such thing as "too small to bother with" in the copyright game.
The problem with most photogrammetry models is you realistically can't alter the model significantly enough without a lot of work to avoid copyright issues... if you were modeling a Keurig coffee maker from scratch, you could give it a different logo or name like "Korik" and alter it's appearance slightly enough to make it recognizable, but not significantly identical... that would be acceptable, there are plenty of items like that out there... but if you scanned a real Keurig machine, about the only thing you could easily alter would be the logo, not without doing a significant amount of work on the mesh, which are usually pretty dense and unorthodox in composition... not that it can't be done (and for some, yes- that effort is less than for others)... and then there is the baked in textures, there are workarounds for that too, but it's just at what point is the amount of effort not worth the reward VS just making it from scratch?
I think where photogrammetry really shines is in reproducing natural objects like a moss covered log or boulder... something that has so much detail it exceeds the effort to model and texture vs just scanning the item and also makes the dense mesh worth using...
The only way I'd even remotely think one could get away with scanning a commercial object was if it were a fairly obvious and cheap knockoff object, from a manufacturer that didn't do a great job knocking off the original... like some $5 knockoff purse that vaguely looks like a brand name but is so "off" it wouldn't even get attention from the original company it was knocking off the look from... the odds of the knockoff manufacturer giving a crap about a 3D reproduction of their knockoff are incredibly slim.
Then there is the moral or ethical issue of just scanning stuff willy-nilly without the actual copyright holder's approval...
Logs and boulders are just easier and nature won't sue you.