The CAD Insider

Autodesk ReCap Makes 3D Photos

Accessibility and affordability make ReCap Best of Show at SPAR International 2014

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO (SPAR International 2014) - Autodesk's ReCap, short for reality capture, is a collection of application and service intended to make 3D models of existing objects, buildings, even landscapes, which can then be used for information, modification or design. ReCap will use digital photos or point clouds and create what is essentially a 3D photograph.

Autodesk video shows existing landscape with 3D model of bridge

3D CAD model of car heads down 3D scanned assembly line. (Picture courtesy of Volvo)

Applications

• An architect can get a 3D model of the surroundings in which to place a new design
• A city could see how a bridge would look in its eventual surroundings (see bridge above)
• A factory would know if a new car model would clear existing assembly line equipment (see Volvo example above)
• An aftermarket car car part could be shown on an existing vehicle
• Accident re-creation and forensics
• Women could finally get jeans that fit (see below)

 

I Hate My Jeans

Half the population of the US (the female half) is not happy with their jeans or how they look in them. Imagine biometric data from a 3D scan (that you did yourself and encrypted, of course) that could be sent to a clothing manufacturer for a custom fit.

A single body scan could result in custom made shoes, suits, more...

Key Differentiating Technology

The ability to snap photos from several points of view and have software create a 3D model is a key technology in ReCap. While we take the precise recording to a 2D space for granted in a photo, think of superimposing another photo over the first one from another view point, then another, and so on. A photo shoot to capture an object in 3D could have 30, 40 or more photos. The more the better, actually, in terms of accuracy. The thought of having to sort out millions of pixels in 3 dimensions is enough to give me a headache. Luckily it's all handled by the software, all "under the hood."

Autodesk acquired this technology (known as photogrammetry) in the form of REALVIZ, a small company it found in the south of France which it bought it for an undisclosed sum. REALVIZ founder Dominique Pouliquen moved to the SF Bay Area and now integrates the technology into Autodesk products. REALVIZ surfaced first in 123D Catch which is now ReCap.

3D photobooth at the Autodesk Gallery uses ReCap will create a 3D photo

It is a popular exhibit in the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco, where over 20 cameras will turn your likeness into a small head and shoulders bust. For $35. Unfortunately, the tops of the head is always missing, but Dominique tells me it can be fixed easily by an additional 2 overhead cameras.

Is Any of This New or Unique?

Google has been prowling the streets with this 3D camera set up for years. (picture courtesy of Google)

Photogrammetry, the math of positioning points in space often from 2D recordings developed not long after the recordings themselves. There's many products that can create 3D models from photographs. Several small companies but also one giant. Google may well be the biggest creator and user of photogrammetry with its ambitious plan to digitize the worlds roadways. Laser scanning, or LIDAR, long a favored tool to capture site data for civil engineers to create digital terrain maps (DTMs) for making and widening roadways, adding bridges, etc., came to light (pun intended) in the '60s. Also, the creation of 3D models from point clouds has been going on for decades.

Access and Affordability

Airplanes equipped with LIDAR can map entire country sides. Factory interiors, BIM models, airplanes, etc., can be modeled with application of a laser scanning system such as those from Faro, Surphaser, and many others who were displaying their wares at SPAR. The equipment is not cheap to acquire. Expect to spend $100K to get a decent laser scanning setup. A van equipped with 360 scan equipment is so expensive and requires so much training and that most state DoTs cannot afford them and don't want to bother with them.

So what is an individual or small firm to do? The typical architect in a small firm does not have that kind of budget, much less LIDAR equipped flight services in his address book.

But we do all have digital cameras -- at least one. They're built into our phones. Send the photos to a service and let it stitch the photos together. Autodesk provides this service for free. Want to scan the neighborhood and entire neighborhood -- from above? You could rig up a point-and-shoot camera to a drone and let it buzz around for 15 minutes taking shots every second, upload it to Autodesk's Recap 360, and receive a 3D model. Autodesk will do its part for FREE! I don't know how long this generosity can continue but enjoy it while you can. You will have to buy your own drone and camera.

Autodesk demonstrated this capability with off-the-shelf $750¹ UAVs (they don't like to say drones) to scan the Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs. (See Is That a Drone? Run for Cover)

The accessibility and affordability makes Autodesk ReCap a welcome entry into the architecture, design and engineering world.

How Much

ReCap is free. You can download it here http://www.autodesk.com/products/recap/get-started. It is included with every 3D Autodesk design suite though it is mentioned with the Building Design Suite on Autodesk's site at the time of this writing.

ReCap Pro, which adds targetless registration of scans in the field, goes for $450/month or $3600 a year.

1. 3DR IRIS, by 3D Robotics, $750. See https://store.3drobotics.com/products/IRIS.

For more info:

• Google Street View 
• Autodesk Recap - corporate product site
• Photogrammetry - Wikipedia entry

 

Bentley Does Point Clouds

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO - and Bentley was on hand at SPAR, the annual gathering for the 3D scanning industry, to remind attendees that its applications that have been helping with 3D scanning and point clouds for years. 

It as at SPAR Europe late in 2011 that Bentley announced it had bought PointTools for its Vortex point cloud engine. The idea was to make point clouds more usable -- which was not the case previously given the massive amount of data and file sizes of infrastructure scans.

"A point cloud file can be 50 to 60 billion points," says Ron Gant, head of marketing for Bentley's civil engineering line. "We've integrated PointTools into all Bentley applications now and can handle very large datasets."

Kurt Rasmussen, AE for Bentley, shows customer point cloud processing with Descartes.

Still, what good is a point cloud if you can't make any sense out of it? 3D laser scans produce x, y, z data that used to be displayed as white points on the screen. Get into the middle of that and it can look like outer space amidst the stars. And you are lost. It has been helpful that most scans nowadays use a camera in conjunction with the laser to capture a color value for each point. With the addition of color, the scan starts approaching what the eye would see and the universe starts looking a lot more orderly. 

But you still have points.

What CAD users need are objects. The pipe that was scanned with a laser is represented as a million points. You can't move the pipe by picking it and dragging it. You can't use it for interference checking. Enter Bentley's Descartes, which can use the points to make CAD geometry.

It's not magic. Don't expect Descartes to sort out the point cloud on its own. A skilled human operator still needs to be in the process.

Kurt Rasmussen, application engineer for Bentley, who shows me Descartes, prefers a step by step approach. He guides Descartes through a colorized point cloud model of the inside of a process plant, letting the software create a pipe here, a column there. A useful CAD model emerges piece by piece. Descartes appears quite adept at interpreting close-together points and determining them to be standard structural shapes. Its efficiency is obvious. But Daniel is there to when the points don't tell the real story. For example, when the laser doesn't record a surface from which it is reflected, or where fireproofing material throws off the shape of an I-beam. A chain link fence might confuse the software -- but not Kurt.

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For more information, see Bentley Descartes product page: http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/Bentley+Descartes/

Is That a Drone? Run for Cover

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO (SPAR Int’l 2014) – Autodesk invited the press to the Garden of the Gods to watch them make 3D models of using some of the Reality Capture applications being shown at SPAR.

The plan was to have cameras mounted to a couple of toy aircraft circle the rock formations and convert the resulting photographs into 3D models.

Scarcely had the first aircraft gone up when a passing local registered her alarm.

 “Is that a drone?”

Such is the prevailing fear about drones in domestic airspace. Never mind that the aircraft in question were each about 10 lbs of hardware equipped with nothing more harmful than a camera. Never mind that the potential uses would bring down cost of aerial photography, add terabytes of useful land data for a variety of uses (some even for the public good) or that Amazon could use them to get us our next Apple device sooner than next day. Never mind that hobbyists have been flying radio controlled aircraft without so much as a public whimper since as long as I can remember. Instead there exists a fear of overhead unmanned flying objects that could, at best, crash down on our heads and at worst blow us up in our sleep with missiles. Like they do overseas -- which is ok because they are blowing up terrorists, right?

While Autodesk has gotten away with flying the UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) over the San Francisco bay area and now over the Garden of the Gods, most of the UAV fleet in the US remains essentially grounded. Trimble’s slick UAV is being sold only to government agencies and the occasional university for research. 

University of Colorado at Denver, present at SPAR, is lucky enough to have appropriated a few of the Trimble UAVs and have embarked on a variety of projects to demonstrate their usefulness.

Among the assembled press, there was a lot of questions and confusion about what was allowable and legal. What constitutes a drone – as opposed to a UAV or model plane? It is a matter of stick control by an operator on the ground vs a pre-planned flight. Was it the altitude at which they operated, say 400 feet? Was it the size of the machine? Was it its use, business or pleasure, free or commercial. Even some at Autodesk were not sure. 

The concern and debate of drones/AUVs threatened to take over what would have been otherwise a really cool demonstration of technology. After something like a half hour of flight with some cheap point-and-shoot cameras on top of off-the-shelf $750* toy choppers, Autodesk would be able to create a impressive, full color, accurate enough 3D model of a massive geologic formation. Could it be done by an ordinary person any other way? Could a small firm pay a LIDAR equipped airplane for a similar model of the terrain for their next project?

Autodesk may have shown how UAVs couples withe their software can bring costs down to earth. By a couple orders of magnitude. If it can be heard over public hysteria.

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*Autodesk was using 3D Robotics 3DR IRIS Multicopter, which lists for $750

Volvo CAD Meets Point Cloud

In this digital age, wouldn't you imagine that cars float through virtual assembly lines? Avatars ensuring that assembly workers will have room to maneuver their wrenches? Ensuring robotic arms having no collisions with fenders, rendering an otherwise gleaming auto undeliverable for an unsightly dent?

But car models get bigger every year with just about every automaker. Volvo was not alone in seeing the chance of collisions down the line getting increasingly common.

CAD model of car in point cloud representation of factory at Volvo

Volvo  had been pushing a cardboard mockup of the latest model down the line. This seemingly low tech approach was at least better than having to stop the line -- something no factory will want to do. But the cardboard models would not survive the acid bath, a pit into which the real car would receive its rust proofing. And that pit was getting smaller every year, it seemed.

Volvo has not found a single digital solution to simulate the car going down the line and so have to use a hybrid model. A point cloud from a 3D scan simulates the assembly line. As is becoming increasingly common, a laser scanner is situated in a spot on the factory floor and generates a million 3D points. This is repeated in multiple locations in the same factory. the more the better. One vantage point will "see" things another scan does not. Do this often enough and Volvo got a usable model of the existing factory assembly line. So much easier than having to model the factory!

The car, however, existed as a solid model. Volvo now brings the CAD model into through the point cloud and is able to solve problems before they become an issue on the real factory floor.

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Source:  "Living in the Point Cloud" Magnus Rönnäng, Volvo, keynote presentation at SPR Int'l 2014, April 15, 2014