Click here to view the embedded video.

Uh oh!  My first vimeo linked video.  Watch out!  Hope I don’t become addicted?

I suppose it did such a nice job due to a lack of light pollution, considering I was out in the middle of nowhere on the north shore.

http://www.imodeller.com/en/

You load in a set of images sitting on a flat calibration chart, they recommend using 10-20 shots.  I loaded 30 initially, which about a dozen were to low of shots and they were unable to calibrate properly.  In the end I ended up using a total of 5 shots for technical reasons I’ll describe below.

You then run the calibration mode.  Which will generate reference points for the 3d voxel space based off the distortion of the calibration chart looking threw your specific lens.  In my case a 18-200 mm VR2 nikkor strapped onto my d90 with the focal length all the way back at 18mm.  The 18mm focal length is introducing a good amount of distortion, which i did adjust for in Lightroom using the distortion profile for the lens.  How planar the calibration chart is will affect the accuracy of the model ( read right off the product’s site ) and my chart was showing a bit of waviness, most likely because I printed it last night and the humidity here has been high!  You can also manually adjust the reference points  which I choose not to along with using a somewhat wavy chart considering the software is in demo mode and I was unable to actually export a model.  No need to spend any laborious time making a super accurate model.

After you calibrate your images you run the masking function.  The software will attempt to mask the profile of the object in all of your images automatically with a little bit of tweaking needed supposedly.  Which is the reason I only used 5 images in the end.  For some reason the program would not automatically mask my images, I didn’t investigate why not for very long and just painted a few out manually.  The program could use a few more tools for masking in my opinion, like a vector pen tool.  But it does have a polygonal line tool which was better then using just a brush.  it also took me a bit to figure out how to pan, they don’t offer the standard pan move, instead you have to zoom out then center zoom in.  Or paint over the frame edge and drag.  In the end, you end up with something like this, which is used for the model point placement generation along with being used for the texture sampling.  You can also describe in each image where to be used at, for geo/tex.

After the calibration and the masking you can generate your geometry and the uv mapping.  Here you see that the model outputs what you would expect for topology.  Not very good geometry for use in 3d animation envioronments as raw data, but pretty great results as geometry for use as a 3d under-drawing which can then be retopologized or constructed in an overlay fasion.  The results are pretty amazing in my opinion especially considering it’s constructed for a whole 5 source images.  I should also note it appears you can construct larger images then what appear to fit on the calibration chart.  If you look on the iModdler product website they have an example of scanning a deer’s head which is on a stand that appears to be up to two feet tall.

Here’s a few screenshots of the actual final model, which should be taken with a grain of salt.  I really didn’t spend anytime finessing the setup inside the software as I just wanted to quickly test the software.  You can see some nasty texture isssues, which are a result of not enough images used in the calculations along with having some uneven lighting when I captured the source images.  I couple probably use some softboxes here!

The UV layout that is outputted is also to be expected, is sort of an automatic mapping that has chunks of samples used from each image all combined into one map.  I’m sure with some reading and practice you could get some cleaner maps.  But again, the texture output could also just be used as a reference for another means of projection mapping later.

Oh yea and did I mention iModeller also exports right into Cinema 4D?

All in all I was pretty impressed with my quick test results.  The models generated may not be the finals, but they would be a very fast way of blocking them out.  It’s hard to determine an exact average workflow time just based off this one test but I would assume could have your blocked out model done in an hour.  This test took a total of 3 hours, which included setting up my mini-stage.  Taking the shots, processing them, fumbling my way through the interface, running through all the procedures, and writing this blog post.

Here’s a  link to another modeller out there that use the same Photogrammetry technique. It is a higher cost solution, but also appears to generate a better model along with having more advanced options and mesh/spline output possibilities for cad drawings.

http://www.3dreshaper.com/en1/En_software.htm

And here’s a version with the noise reduction settings really cranked up about 3/4 full.

And here’s just a couple close up crops of close to the original 1:1 size.

Pretty sweet, now I just need to set aside some time to setup a detailed lens correction profile for my d90/tokina 11-16 combo so I can take advantage of the new automatic lens correction in Lightroom 3. 

]]> http://www.mayajunky.com/wide-angle-crazy/feed/ 2 http://www.mayajunky.com/projecting-splines-on-surfaces/ http://www.mayajunky.com/projecting-splines-on-surfaces/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:27:59 +0000 Brian http://www.mayajunky.com/?p=131 Attempting to help someone out on cgTalk with a problem I decided to create a quick demo on projecting splines on surfaces in c4d. Even though this is only half the solution and just one of the ways you could do this, I still hope you find it useful.

You can create circular patterns on a sphere by projecting splines along a plane onto a polygon object.  Which is really easy to do, the hard part would be to figure out the pattern and correcting tiling dimensions needed to generate the ornate spherical pattern that has been described.

“Hey there, can any help me to find out, how to build a ball like this one at 0:16 in the middle!?
http://www.maxonpodcast.de/movies/no_keyframes_480p.mov”

My suggestion would be to figure out the pattern in 2d first, then you should be able to project one 5-point star, then duplicate and rotate the rest of the sections from the sphere’s center point.  Figuring out the size a sphere to project the fixed pattern on my bay a little tricky also however, most likely trial and error while trying to find the right amount of distortion needed.

Anyways, back to spline projections to get you stared.

Prepping objects for a good projection.    Create an arc object and set it’s type to bezier with uniform interpolation.  Use the object axis tool to move the objects pivot to the start of the spline.  Then move the spline back to world origin.  Create an array object and drop the spline in as a child.  Inside the array object’s attributes you can set the radius of the array.  Dropping the radius to zero will create a default 7 point star, I set the radius however to be 10 so that when I sweep these paths later on I could easily patch together all the sweeps in the center ( all values described based on my relative default object sizes used during generation ).  To change the star to be five points drop the number of copies in the array to be 4, remember array’s start at zero!  Or the master object and 4 copies.  That does it for the curves.

Create a sphere to be projected onto and set the segments fairly high so that when we project our splines the bezier points have enough information available to sample from.  Please note my bezier curve above shows 5 points because when I made the curve editable it’s interpolation was set to adaptive.  If you try to project a spline with few points onto a faceted sphere you will get undesired results since the spline points align to the normals of the polygon it falls on.  Make sure to make the sphere large enough to overlap all the splines from the top view and your sphere should be ready to be projected onto.  Also note I pulled the array up above the sphere for illustrative purposes, which is not actually needed based on the projection mode I will be using.

For the actual projection you first want to make your array of splines editable.  If you try and just select the spline under the array node and create the project you will again get undersired results as the splines will loosely fit the sphere.  With the splines now their own objects select the Project command under Structure > Edit Spline > Project.  In the tools options set the mode to xz plane which will function as described.  Click apply and you should see the splines fit to the surface of the spere.

You can now hide the sphere, but might want to hold onto it for awhile, never know when you might need to know the parameters of the sphere again.  Create a circle object, set it’s interpolation to uniform, and rename it “profile_master”.  Create an instance of the profile_master to be used in all 5 sweeps.  Next create a sweep nurbs object and drop your profile instance in as a child first, followed by the first spline path.  You should see your sweep object, now you can adjust the number of intermediate uniform points on both your profile and path splines to get the desired resolution for a smooth yet optimized mesh.  Tweek some of the fun parameters like the end scale of the sweep.  Now that the sweep has been initialized just duplicate you sweep parent 4 times and then replace the duplicated path with the other 4 paths.  You should end up with something like this.

Having the master circle object makes it easy to adjust the initial thickness of the sweeps.  You could also use instance objects for you paths, or just make one sweep and then instance the sweep object.  Probably a dozen different approaches but I’ll stick to this one.  Now that you have all your sweeps create a group for them which is centered at the world origin (assuming your sphere was initially centered at world origin).  Duplicate the group and you can rotate it anywhere you want.  I would of course patch up the center before you do that.

That’s the general premise of how I would attack the problem considering I’m not a mathematician or anything.  Sorry I could help you out with the pattern!  I have a feeling the golden ratio is hidden in there somewhere.  Might have to investigate it more though sometime as you can make some really cool forms like this. 

]]> http://www.mayajunky.com/projecting-splines-on-surfaces/feed/ 1 http://www.mayajunky.com/st-paul-como-zoo/ http://www.mayajunky.com/st-paul-como-zoo/#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 03:30:34 +0000 Brian http://www.mayajunky.com/?p=116 A few images taken at the Como Zoo in St. Paul.

That new macro I got looks right through wires!

Okay not really from that distance but it’s always good to keep up on your clone painting skills.  

Curious as to what this little pineapple looking plant is?  Guess I should have took a picture of it’s label.

This one has a nice bokeh.

These little fish are so fast but I got lucky and caught one in focus.

Wish I would have gotten one with a better focus on these cool dudes too.

One chill Sloth.

]]> http://www.mayajunky.com/st-paul-como-zoo/feed/ 0 http://www.mayajunky.com/pseudo-hdr/ http://www.mayajunky.com/pseudo-hdr/#comments Tue, 30 Mar 2010 04:07:55 +0000 Brian http://www.mayajunky.com/?p=107 A few pics that missed out on other postings.

I hope it’s not only animators that think it would be hilarious to see this goose tip-toe along the edge of the water like this.  

This one must know it’s on camera.

And finally these two, as close as I could get before they jumped back into the water.

]]> http://www.mayajunky.com/noonan-park-geese-and-two-ducks/feed/ 0