Standalone version of Recap 360

[OmkarJ]

Hello, Bear with me for a simple question here. For the purpose of CFD and FEA, we need to scan the patterns to create 3D models and we have started using Recap 360 in the cloud for rendering the 3D models from the images. While the 360 does provide a flexibility, we rather would be happy if we could have standalone licence and run it locally since that may be cost effective in long run. We use our local computational clusters to run CFD and FEA simulations so I would think they can probably handle the rendering. We currently have Autodesk Product Suite which has Recap bundled with it. But I doubt it has the capability to render the 3D models from images. So, is Recap 360 software available as a standalone licence (on the lines of Sim 360 Pro versus Simulation CFD etc)? Alternatively, can the bundled Recap on our workstations be topped-up with any additional package/licence to use it for the mentioned purpose? Thanks Omkar

[vidanom]

Thank you Omkar for reporting.

For the moment there is no offline version for generating 3D models from photos.

This request has been many times addressed to our team and we are looking into such solution.

Unfortunately for now you’ll have to rely on the online version.

The desktop version is only for processing laser scan data and the latest version can be uploaded from here:

http://www.autodesk.com/products/recap/free-trial

Thank you,

Mitko

[autodeskVEM2B]

I'm glad your team is considering local rendering.  I'm onboard with the move to cloud in IT generally, but this is a very very important edge case.  Until this is addressed, you'll be pricing yourself out of what most smaller businesses need.

If Autodesk's strategy is to do exactly that so that other options can crop up and create a market for these solutions which Autodesk can then buy out, then you're doing exactly the right thing.  Larger companies will take your cloud offering and be happy to do so, as you well know.

But please do not forget that innovation is unpredictable.  Photogrammetry can be applied slightly differently for different applications, and a killer app could come along and take a bigger piece of the space than you had imagined - a big enough piece that they may not sell out.

I was satisfied with the 1-2 models I generated with your product, but of course dronedeploy.com will give me a better result for my uses.  I can upload 1000 images to model a landscape for as many landscapes as I would like for a monthly cost of somewhere around $100/mo.  

I will however import those models into AutoCAD and work with them, so there's that.  I suppose that is actually a win-win for myself and for Autodesk.  

It does, however, hurt us (individuals, small - midsized companies), to invest in hardware that now sits mostly idle because Autodesk had bigger fish to fry.  How much did Autodesk really lose by not communicating to their customers about their strategy?  A strategy which cost their customers many times their investment in your software only to learn the requirements changed?