
Meshroom – Open-source photogrammetry software - moeffju
https://alicevision.org/#meshroom
======
verytrivial
The singer from UK indie pop (?) band Everything Everything self-studied over
three weeks this app along with Blender and some othe stuff to make a very
stylised, glitchy music video the other week.

[https://youtu.be/mcWwGBHa24g](https://youtu.be/mcWwGBHa24g)

He posted "Thanks for the help, guys!" messages in several Reddit forums. It
was weird. "Wait, that's your band?" "Yeah, I'm the singer." "Oh, you sound
great keep going!" These guys have sold out rather large venues in the UK.
Anyway, this seems to have turned in to an endorsement of the band. Ok, yes it
is. But I swear this isn't the singer again.

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jarrell_mark
For those with laptops or who don't have Nvidia GPUs, Meshroom can be used for
free in the cloud using Google colab
[https://github.com/alicevision/meshroom/wiki/Meshroom-in-
Goo...](https://github.com/alicevision/meshroom/wiki/Meshroom-in-Google-
Colab-\(cloud\)). I created this scan using this technique and I only have an
integrated Intel GPU: [https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/parvati-cantor-arts-
center-a...](https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/parvati-cantor-arts-center-at-
stanford-ab1407479bee4259a267030350473b1b)

~~~
canada_dry
It looks great, but weighing in at almost _400K triangles and 300K vertices_
though, so it's going to be difficult to do anything practical with a model
that size.

~~~
jarrell_mark
Blender's decimate modifier can reduce the polys. Infact the model I got from
Meshroom had more vertices than the one I uploaded to sketchfab.
[https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers...](https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/generate/decimate.html)

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manifoldgeo
If anyone would like to see a Meshroom scan, here's a fire hydrant I 3d
scanned in Downtown Portland, Oregon:
[https://socialhome.network/media/uploads/2020/04/30/94efe3d3...](https://socialhome.network/media/uploads/2020/04/30/94efe3d3-41fe-434a-873d-488bebe8e1c7.gif)

I photographed it on my iPhone 8+ and used Meshroom to generate the mesh. The
turntable animation was done in Blender.

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rsp1984
I'd be very interested in a comparison Meshroom vs. RealityCapture (which
seems to become the standard in non-free photogrammetry).

~~~
fsloth
Agisoft Metashape is pretty good as well. Results are comparable to
RealityCapture (depending a bit on what you want) but personal license is only
179$.

I tried all sorts of free photogrammetry softwares way back but after I tried
Metashape I decided to buy a license. With 32 GB of memory it's great. I'm
taking photogrammetry models as a hobby - here's a recent one made with
Metashape [https://skfb.ly/6S6NR](https://skfb.ly/6S6NR)

~~~
hutzlibu
Impressive. How much time did you invest for that model?

~~~
ur-whale
Don't want to speak for the OP, but that's typically the kind of quality I get
directly out of Meshroom with no work other than throwing the pics in it and
waiting ~ 4 hours (less if you have a fast, modern GPU)

~~~
fsloth
"with no work other than throwing the pics in it and waiting ~ 4 hours (less
if you have a fast, modern GPU)"

Personally I find taking the photos (~1000) is more work than actually waiting
the software to complete the processing. Sure, the processing takes longer,
but it's not as if you are turning the crank on the PC the whole time :)

------
TaylorAlexander
Was this always open source? Somehow in my photogrammetry journey I’ve heard
of this and not tried it. I guess I assumed it was proprietary. Anyone have
any comments on how this compares to COLMAP? Looks like better UI at least.

Also anyone interested in the subject check out
[http://reddit.com/r/photogrammetry](http://reddit.com/r/photogrammetry) and
[http://reddit.com/r/3dscanning](http://reddit.com/r/3dscanning)

~~~
cameronfraser
The install process for Alicevision and Meshroom is a pain in the ass, I
basically gave up at some point, would love to hear some input from others
though. I'm currently using OpenSFM and it works great, just very slow.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Huh. I downloaded the binaries from their website and they run directly on my
Ubuntu 18.04 machine with Cuda 10.2. Which is rare.

~~~
cameronfraser
They have binaries? I must have missed that, the only install instructions I
saw were for building from source.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Yep and it's using the GPU i just noticed.

Binaries are linked here:
[https://alicevision.org/#meshroom](https://alicevision.org/#meshroom)

It's really nice! I read more about the project and it's apparently always
been open source. It looks like a high quality project run by some researchers
with university and EU backing. I've been trying to reconstruct large outdoor
environments for robotics simulation and this might be just what I need!

~~~
cameronfraser
Nice, I'm working on something similar but mostly indoor. Are you using SLAM
for the robot itself?

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Nice. I don't have a clear plan for localization yet. Right now I am working
on deep net based trail following. [1] Eventually I will probably do some kind
of vision based localization. [2]

If you can share info on your project I'd love to see it!

[1] [https://reboot.love/t/new-cameras-on-
rover/277/4](https://reboot.love/t/new-cameras-on-rover/277/4)

[2] [https://github.com/ethz-asl/hfnet](https://github.com/ethz-asl/hfnet)

~~~
cameronfraser
I can't unfortunately, work stuff, but definitely check out this if you
haven't already
[https://github.com/xdspacelab/openvslam](https://github.com/xdspacelab/openvslam)
Also that ethz-asl repo contains a library called libpointmatcher, its pretty
awesome if you ever need to do point cloud alignment

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Thank you! I am concerned that traditional vslam techniques will fail outdoors
in off road areas, but that does look nice.

~~~
cameronfraser
I actually have had really good success with it outdoors, much better than
indoor. Worth trying out at least, very easy to get started with if you can
use docker

------
jarnold
Fun software, easy to use. Was able to scan my kid's stuffed animal and
reproduce a small 3d-printed version of it.

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djaque
I'm interested to try it.

I've been watching people do photogrammetry for a while now, but the results
have seemed really bad. When you remove the texture, the underlying model
always seems off. This is important for doing object->mesh->modify->3D-print
workflows.

This implementation looks a bit better than the rest.

~~~
namibj
I have an iirc ~5M vertices mesh with vertex colors. In case you're
interested.

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genpfault
They ever get around to HIPifying the CUDA bits?

~~~
MayeulC
Looks like they're still on it, but there was some progress on it in november
2019, and it looks like it works, although not the default yet, not even at
compile-time:
[https://github.com/alicevision/meshroom/issues/595#issuecomm...](https://github.com/alicevision/meshroom/issues/595#issuecomment-554623654)

I very much second this, as I hate relying on proprietary software of any sort
for stuff that's essential, has a steep learning curve, or that I am going to
use on a regular basis (plus other criteria). GPU drivers match the first and
last point.

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eurasiantiger
There’s a free photogrammetry app in the iOS App Store called turn3d. It’s a
bit rough around the edges but does the job

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crowbahr
It seems like this has good promise, but scale is random on the output.

I've been looking for a good way to make a customized face mask using
photogrammetry and my 3d printer, so I'm going to give this a shot. The only
issue will be scaling the model so that my head is the right size for the
modeling process.

~~~
cameronfraser
The scale issue is a problem with any software like this unfortunately, it
makes doing this type of processing in chunks very difficult as you are
getting different scale outputs and nothing really relating the chunks
together. OpenSFM does some neat stuff where they use location data and just
search for matches between images near that location.

~~~
rkagerer
Dumb question: could you not simply include an object in the scene that is of
known dimensions and use that to calibrate scale?

~~~
zo1
Yes, you definitely could? Not sure for this piece of software specifically
though. But for land-based photogrammetry in general, they usually use known
control-points that have fixed 3d coordinates attached to them in order to
calibrate their models. They also use that to effectively "tie" the resulting
model to an actual location on the map.

------
sandspit
If you don't want to mess with setup etc check out
[https://get.display.land/](https://get.display.land/) which will let you
download and do whatever you want with the resulting models.

------
ris
CUDA-only :(

~~~
slezyr
It seems that there is no photogrammetry software that supports Linux and
Radeon at same time.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
COLMAP can do CPU-only calculation. It takes a big longer but it’s not
horrible.

~~~
Enginerrrd
COLMAP is generally underrated IMO. It's what I primarily use because it's
very flexible for different pipelines, it produces one of the best SFM results
as a starting place, and it's open source with direct access to the database
and decent documentation.

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syntaxing
Has anyone tried it? I've been trying for a while to find a way to 3D scans
stuff to 3D print but the quality of the final file has always been so crappy
that I didn't even want to waste time and filament printing it

~~~
sunsetMurk
What have you tried that's giving you the crappy file?

I've used Scandy Pro[1] a few times and was surprised by it's resolution and
ease-of-use. Only downsides are it's iPhone only and you get 1 free scan/24
hrs.

1- [https://www.scandy.co/apps/scandy-pro](https://www.scandy.co/apps/scandy-
pro)

~~~
syntaxing
I've gotten ok results with large objects like a chair. But for small trinkets
like a figurine or something, I get almost no depth detail, almost like I
smoothed the surface.

------
andybak
Great software.

Now if only they can start to catch up with Reality Capture in terms of
speed...

------
dang
Related from 2019:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684342)

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d0100
Is it possible to do this programatically?

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andybak
Odd that the title didn't use the word "photogrammetry" which is what most
people call this thing.

~~~
moeffju
It's what they call it on their homepage. I didn't want to override that, even
though I would've also called it photogrammetry.

~~~
trynewideas
I see "OPEN SOURCE PHOTOGRAMMETRY SOFTWARE" above the fold when I open up the
site.

~~~
moeffju
I copied the title that was right in the middle of the "hero". Moderators feel
free to add "photogrammetry" to title.

~~~
dang
Added.

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luckydata
No Mac = No go for me.

~~~
ur-whale
vmware player

~~~
luckydata
not gonna work, look at the requirements.

