Recap Pro Questions

[Anonymous]

I have a few questions / requests that I hope to get answered about ReCAP pro.

1. If color scans are done, the default view when registered is RGB. Can this be changed to an intensity view for registration instead?? I find that the colors can often be overexposed, so the intensity is easier to work with. I can't seem to change to intensity until after you index.

2. I referenced the scan to survey control, and the coordinates are large since they are in a transverse mercator projection. The registration goes great, and I apply the control and happy with the fit, but after indexing the points aren't visible at all. I assume this would require updating the origin, but is there another way to update this without seeing the points?? Could it not use my home scan as the origin, or allow me to enter coordinates for the origin??

3. When the scans are registered to survey control, it is great to see the results during the registration, but it doesn't seem to be available after the registration. Can this not just be appended to the Registration Quality Report file??

Thanks.

Kevin

[acmorris]

Kevin,

Great questions, let me see if I can assist

1. If color scans are done, the default view when registered is RGB. Can this be changed to an intensity view for registration instead?? I find that the colors can often be overexposed, so the intensity is easier to work with. I can't seem to change to intensity until after you index.

We are investigating this feature now. Currently, if you import a color scan, it will only be available with RGB infomration.   Today, the work around would be to export the data with only the intensity infomration.  

2. I referenced the scan to survey control, and the coordinates are large since they are in a transverse mercator projection. The registration goes great, and I apply the control and happy with the fit, but after indexing the points aren't visible at all. I assume this would require updating the origin, but is there another way to update this without seeing the points?? Could it not use my home scan as the origin, or allow me to enter coordinates for the origin??

This is another issue we are looking into. Point clouds with large coordinate values have odd rendering issues. If you no longer need the survey control (i.e. have verified the fit) you can delete the survey markers from the point cloud data. Once deleted, you might then neet to create and set one survey marker as <0,0,0>, but you should be back in a local coordinate system, which will render correctly.

3. When the scans are registered to survey control, it is great to see the results during the registration, but it doesn't seem to be available after the registration. Can this not just be appended to the Registration Quality Report file??

It should be in the Registration Quality Report. This has been logged as a bug.

Thanks for the feedback,

Aaron C. Morris

[Anonymous]

Thanks Aaron, I appreciate the response. Just a few comments.

1. I did this to try out the registration, but would be nice to just have the option to switch between the two when regsitering

2. Hopefully you can fix, since this tends to be our workflow to spatially reference all our scans. With the option in recap to assign a coordinate system as well, this shoudl be something that will have to be fixed. The idea of removing the survey control doesn't work for me, since then I would manually have to orient the scan files in AutoCAD since they won't have any sort of coordinate reference or orientation.

3. Good to hear.

One more question regarding the registration, but how does the registration process work when you have a closed loop of scans around a builiding? Since you are fitting scan to scan, when you get the last scan overlapping with the first, how does it handle this in the registration??

Kevin

[acmorris]

Regarding your last question. Even though the target-free registration in ReCap Pro is sometimes referred to as “scan-to-scan”, it is actually “scan-to-entire data set”. Therefore, drift is minimized. In many cases, scan loops are closed without a problem. Large loops where 3D features are sparse may, however, exhibit drift. Adding feature may be required.  We are working on methods to handle these more challenging cases, but for many indoor spaces, it should work well.   

[Anonymous]

Regarding question 1 above: 

If the scan has been done with colour, is intensity not available at all in the final project?  I don't mind so much using colour only during regisitration but would really appreciate being able to choose between the two in the final project.

I have succesfully registered 14 external scans (where colours are good), but the intensity values are all zero.  

Is the only option to see intensity to not scan with colour in the first place, or is there a way to switch off the colour in the import process?  Basically, I now have a dataset scanned with colour but really want to be able to see intensity values as a priority over the RGB values.

I scan with Faro Focus 3D so am importing .fls files

[acmorris]

In the current ReCap Pro release, it is not possible to switch between color and intensity views. We are, however, aware of this issue and are looking to provide an option to swtich between modes in a future release.

For now, if you want intensity only with the FARO Focus, you must either scan without color or import the scans in FARO Scene.  When Scene imports the scans, it will save the intensity scans as .fls files inside a folder located in the same directory as the workspace. Those files can then be brought into ReCap and will not have color.

[Anonymous]

I have done a new scan with colour switched off.  Now when I register and index in Recap I still can not change the intensity values.  The intensity is all zero (or all red on the colour spectrum).  Equally, when I export to Autocad 2014 the pointcloud is marked as 'Scan Colors'  and not 'Intensity' so I can not change the Intensity Color Mapping Setting.  

It seems that the intensity values from the scanner are being used as the RGB color values in Recap so that the intenisty values in Recap are null.  Consequently on export to Autocad all I get is a scan with color that is actually the intensity.

Does any of that make sense?

Previously when registering in Scene and then indexing in Recap the RGB Colour is Colour and the Intensity is intensity, so that on export to CAD I could play around with the Intensity Color Mapping Setting (greyscale/spectrum etc).

Am I missing something or is the ability for intensity to be intensity and not RGB, not available yet when registering scans in Recap Pro?

Paul S.

Faro Focus 3D

Autodesk Recap Pro

AutoCad 2014

[ryan.frenz]

Hi Paul,

This sounds a bug in ReCap Pro that will be fixed in the next release.  You should always be able to toggle between RGB and Intensity in the 3D view (and the downstream products).

Stay tuned to this board for an announcement on the next Beta (should be in the next month or so).

Thanks for using ReCap Pro.

Ryan

[Anonymous]

Has an update been made to recap solving the issue of switching between RGB and intensity? I'm still haveing issues with this.