New and final Windows Beta pre-release build of Memento available now!

[TatjanaDzambazova]

Hi all!

We just published what will be the last Beta pre-release of Memento.

The next build will be our commercial release under the official product name Autodesk® ReMake

you can download the (Windows version) build here:

http://memento.autodesk.com/try-memento

What’s new in this April 2016 Windows Beta release:

• Win update ONLY: This Beta update is available for WIN machines only. The Mac update will be released soon.
• New file format version: Most important to know is that this release introduces a new file format that will not work with previous versions of Memento (this is especially important for users who collaborate with others who use a Mac version of Memento, given that the Mac versions not yet ready and will not be able to open files generated with the WIN version. (workaround is to export to OBJ or FBX and reimport the OBJ / FBX in an older version). The new file format is optimized for faster loading and rendering performance. The models from previous versions are automatically converted and saved on first load, hence keep a back-up copy of the original in case you need it.
• Offline reconstruction – We now offer local (offline) reconstruction feature for converting photo into 3D models giving the choice to use the cloud or own machine. PLEASE NOTE: This process is computationally very intensive and has higher system requirements. Check the updated system requirements at the end of the document.
  • Reconstruction settings – For local reconstruction, various parameters are available control the quality, details etc…
  • 1000 images. As Alpha feature and for limited time, we offer testing of ~1000 image (50 GigaPixels) reconstructions.
  • Texture quality improvements – The quality of texture projection has been improved and also fixes the projection errors widely reported by the users. Currently this is available in offline mode, but soon will be updated on the cloud.
• Scale and units – You can now set general units to the Memento scene/model, and change scale not only by setting a distance but also by percentage
• Reference points – You can now define and visualize a list of reference points. With this build of Memento, the reference points are useful for the following scenarios:
  • To set global coordinate system for the model. This is useful when Memento model is exported to other applications (ReCap, Civil3D, Maya etc). This can be achieved by inserting known coordinates on specific points. (you need to insert minimum 3 points)
  • For diff analysis/compare feature: In this case you will need to set the two models (Model 1 and Model 2) to be compared in a same coordinate system. To do that, best is to open two parallel sessions of memento. In the one you load Model 1, in the second Model 2. In the first one, click on the Model 1 to set at least 3,4 coordinate points, each time reading and noting their current coordinates and retyping the same coordinate values on coordinate points that you have set in te same location on Model 2. This action puts the two models in the same coordinate space. After doing that, in the first session open the ‘Analyze the difference between two models’ tool and find the second model to load. Now you can perform diff analysis between two models. In the next update we will have automated Align tools that should simplify this significantly.
• Decimate selection – Up to now Memento offered global decimation only. We now have local decimation or decimation on selection. You can find that as an option in the in-canvas Decimation, under Retopologize/Decimate
• Bounding Box – The bounding box is a new UI element that helps you at all times understand the outer dimensions of your model. Its very helpful when interoperating with other tools (workflows where precision and dimension are important such as Fusion, 123D Make etc). The bounding box appears automatically in many tools that we think need to inform you of the size of the model but you can also turn it on as you please from the Options menu/Environment (horizontal nav. bar) Or with the shortcut “b” to toggle between various modes.
• Export templates – To eliminate the need to know file format, maximum polygon size, orientation, texture size and many other ‘geeky’ details, for users who are not super versed in the world of 3d file exchange and for everyone who wants a one click export, we created Quick Export templates that are one button click for ideal interoperability with tools such as Fusion360, Stingray, Meshmixer, Unity, Unreal, Maya, 3dsMax, AutoCAD, ArtCAM,123D Make, Blender etc. (please let us know if you see that the current templates have issues with the selected size etc. we will be learning and amending!)
• Usability improvements and bug fixes: Set model upright, Hole tool, Bridge tool – we automated selections and improved the controls, gizmo etc.
• Publish – There are two news here:
•          New Autodesk Gallery: We are switching to the official Autodesk Gallery (gallery.autodesk.com/memento) meaning that your projects will be displayed along all ADSK users’ models and along your own models made with other Autodesk products. In this Beta we will still keep the old Gallery but starting with the launch, we will only have the new Viewer and new Gallery.
•          Play Viewer: We have a new online viewer. This is just the first simple preview of our new Interactive explorer Play. Play builds on the previous experiences of Smithsonian X 3D explorer work we did http://3d.si.edu/browser and it’s a platform for creating real time online experiences. The Memento Viewer is just a tiny template made with Play, that we start with, that will evolve into a template similar to the X 3D and available to all. To publish to Play, select the second option in the Publish tool. When the model is published, a new Play UI will be opened allowing to select from 2 simple templates – (drag and drop your selection over the uploaded model) – you can change various settings (turn on wireframe, control the background color, opacity, light, auto-rotate or not etc) and than from there, publish to Autodesk Gallery or share with hyperlink and HTML. In this last Beta we will still keep the old way of publishing and the old Gallery. they will be merged into one when we go live in May. (To switch between the two Galleries, use the Gallery Tab on the memento web site)

We also want to inform you that we are opening a very limited, ‘by invitation only’ Alpha testing of the full Project Play editor where you can create tools like the Smithsonian’s http://3d.si.edu/browser 3D on your own as well as many other exciting interactive, multimedia real time experiences. Follow the Memento web page for updates. If you would like to apply for alpha testing of Project Play, please send and email to play@autodesk.com in which you state your name, profession, company you work at, portfolio links and what kind of online interactive experiences would you build with Play and we can consider you for the limited Alpha group.

Updated system requirements for Memento

http://memento.autodesk.com/try-memento

Enjoy and let us know how does it go!

[itcadvendors]

Question on the latest build from 4/22

I'm trying to do an offline create of an engine bay. I took about 800+ photos, but when i choose offline, It is still saying limited to 250 images. However, in your opening post, it states offline reconstruction 1000 images.

Am I missing something? any ideas?

thanks!

-M

[murali.p]

Hi,

Select the Beta feature to enable 1000 images.

Note in Ultra mode *donot* change the default settings for more than 50 images. The compute time increases exponentially for fine resolution.

Make sure the system meets or exceeds recommended system requirements (https://memento.autodesk.com/try-memento). I would recommend a very good workstation. And rough estimate would be 2 to 4 days of processing depending on your machine spec.

Regards,

Murali

Regards,

Murali

[schmedia]

For the $30 per month do you get preference in the server queue? 

[nbheyning]

A queu?  Will there be any once people have to pay these monthly fees?

For people who want to try this sytem it is rather expensive. If we would be forced to have a subscription for many months and to buy credit points for $ 100, it will creat a barrier of a few hundred dollars.  My guess is that only heavy users remain, and others stay away (or stay with 123catch).  And heavy users might consider soonest to invest heavy PC for them selves.

No, not happy with this. Why not create an intermediate step and give opportunity to pay more for each use and forget the subscription? That seems a better way to create a new market

Hope to hear from you, your Memento is great.

Rgds,  Nicolaas

[hkitservices]

Hi,

The new pricing is apparently for people with big wallet. I presume the yearly amount will be around 310USD, plus lets say 1 scan per week, the bill goes over 500USD.
And the people that can invest that much money every year, are the ones that most probably have the high-end machine and do not require to pay the 5USD supplement for doing the reconstruction on the cloud !!

I am going to start to look for other solutions / software  🙂

[daveontheroad]

Hi

All technical questions aside. 

I'd still like to know if there is a non-profit option for those of us who use this software for cultural heritage restoration and protection. We simply can't afford these rates to do our voluntary work. 

What options are there for us?

[miketurpin_innovatingfutures]

Hi,

Just trying out the new offline version of Memento and got the following error below.

My computer has a NVIDIA Quadro K1100M graphics card with latest drivers, why wont this work?

Thanks

Mike

[lupaJSSYW]

Hello, I've been using Memento during the last months with sucess, but I'm having problems with the last build. I have Memento instaled on my desktop and in my notebook and now I installed on a workstation from my lab to try the offline reconstruction. I'm having a very different experience in each of them. On my desktop almost always the photos stich well. On my notebook is almost the same, with the exception of one batch that do not stick. However, on my workstation (windows 7, 128gb Ram, dual Xeon and a Quadro K5200) I was unable to make any recostruction (online or offline) because I always get the following message: Photo Validation is completed All of the 0 photos stiched well. I get this message, on both online and offline modes, when I use the same photos which worked on my desktop.

Is there a compatibility issue with some components of my workstation or perhaps I have to install or update any other software to make it work?

[murali.p]

Hi,

For free version, reconstruction on cloud with standard quality will be not be charged.

HTH!

Regards,

Murali

[murali.p]

Hi Mike,

Looks like Memento is unable to detect the card. Could you please reinstall the drivers from Nividia website and restart?

Also if possible, run dxdiag.exe and send us the screen shot of "Display" tab.

Regards,

Murali

[murali.p]

Hi,

Memento only needs upto date graphics driver for the Nvidia card.

When you say, cloud reconstruction fails, did you mean Photo Validation (which always runs on the system) fails? For cloud reconstruction, your system specs are irrelevant, since actual process happens on cloud servers. So please ignore validation check failures and try with a good dataset (that you are sure would sititch or has stitched on other machine) and clour reconstruction should work.

For local reconstruction, we need to look at the log to check what is going wrong on the workstation. Please PM me. Thanks!

Regards,

Murali

[daveontheroad]

Hi Murali/ AutoDesk

Thank for the confirmation about the standard edition not being charged. This is very good for average users. 

As a volunteer organisation trying to protect heritage buildings in a developing country with no funding we are wondering if there is someone we can write to within Autodesk that could help us with something equivilant to a student licence?

High res imagery is what we are working with as it's esential on old buildings to pick up the details standard does not. 

Again, none of our usuage of Memento or the next incarniation is for profit. It's simply to preserve unprotected buildings in a developing country. 

If you could provide an email address to someone at autodesk that would be willing to look at our case I would happy to provide all our details? 

Many thanks

[shaamaan]

daveontheroad

Well, after testing Memento and comparing with other photogrammetry tools, i can say that Memento is mostly toy, and only one thing made it standing behind competitors is cloud computing.

If you need archive quality results, better check other tools like Agisoft Photoscan or Capturing Reality. Photoscan provide amasing control on all levels of photogrammetry, Capturing reality is f**n fast and can eat thousands of images with limited memory.
Them cost much more than Memento (but comparing with one time payment vs subscription) probably better choice.

Autodesk, sorry for some truth.

And may be you later add manual match-point placement for weak images, postprocessing dence cloud, reimport retopologised mesh with custom UV, and allow generate textures right from photos to this reimported mesh...

[lupaJSSYW]

Hello, I meant Photo Validation. I updated the Nvidia Driver and reinstalled Memento. Now the photo validation works and apparently also the local reconstruction (I`ll know better tomorrow). Thank you for your help!

[brit_b]

I also use Meshmixer, 3ds Max, and Photoscan, but Memento has a lifesaving editing feature the others don’t - "extrude", that extrudes a one dimensional scanned surface. Will this new beta version run out and "self-destruct", so we need to use the new free version? And will the free version have this extrude editing component?  

Additionally, will the paid version have the ability to use lossless tiff images for scanning reconstruction? And will it have ortho views as in Max? It might be worth the $30 per month. (Are there any list of features available?)

[yorke]

Congrats Memento team on progressing to the Official Product stage with ReMake. 

It's great to see Local Compute added and the photo limit increased (Shame my machine doesnt meet the recommeded specs for the 50 GigaPixels option though)

Unfortunatley this latest and final beta release has been having some issues, like freezing up other applications while running a local compute, which can be understandable given it requires a lot to run, but also it crashed and never completed. 

I was testing a set of 250 photos which worked fine in previous versions, it took a few hours to get to 90% and then I left it over night and came back to a crash screen the next morning. After that my machine was almost unusable with all applications slow to respond and I needed to restart.

Another issue I've noticed is the 3Dconnexion functionality seems to have been lost in this version?

My machine specs are:

Intel Xeon 3.5GHz

64bit windows 7 Enterprise

32 GB RAM

Nvidia Quadro K4000 3GB Memory, driver 361.91

[inventief]

I;m also in heritage. Not in a developing country, but it's still hard to find money for new techniques, especially when you're non-profit. To bad this great software is subscription and over priced...:(

[shaamaan]

@inventief
I recommend you learn VisualSFM/OpenMVS. The same algorithms like in Memento. And quality not so far from memento. But cost 0$
But workflow is not so easy on the first steps.

[inventief]

@shaamaan Yes I've tried it. The post prosessing part isnt working that good.
You can get nice point clouds, but the meshing part is the problem. ofc tried meshlab etc.. But i guess i have to revisit the VisualSFM workflow. Still memento (Remake) had a better workflow, especially if you work in Maya.

[shaamaan]

that why I recommend not VisualSFM/CMVS but VisualSFM/OpenMVS, because OpenMVS use modern algorithms (better than Agisoft Photoscan) but a bit less stable and need time for undestand all possible and some hidden settings.