Photogrammetry
Whilst working as a Character Animator at Cloud Imperium Games I was introduced to a photographic based 3d capture technology that was being used primarily at CIG to accurately capture character heads\faces.
The setup used to achieve the head\face capture was\is very sophisticated and consisted of a large array of expensive synchronised DSLR cameras with fixed focal length lenses arranged in a spherical orbit formation around the subject.
There’s nothing particularly new here and the technique is similar, albeit a static snapshot, as opposed to the real-time motion scanning technique that was used on LA Noire by Team Bondi.
On speaking with the face tech team at CIG I discovered that the technique could be adapted to allow the use of a single DSLR, by simply moving the point of view around the subject in order to mimic the dozens of camera angles required by the clever software that then stitched them all together in order to extract the depth imformation.
At some later stage my eye was caught by an indie game coming out of Poland by a dev team going by the name ‘The Atronauts’. ‘The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’ leant heavily on this photographic 3D capture technique and put it to very impressive use via the Unreal Engine.
http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/
On reading the above article I decided it was time to give this technique a try in order to establish whether or not it would be useful for my own project ideas.
First baby steps.. The ‘Luggage’ Bookend Test
This was a ‘first test’ using Agisoft Photoscan to establish what the process involved.
A series of photo’s were taken at 2 heights; 45 degree angle down as well as appoximately level with the model, at 45 degree intervals around the model.
Bigger things.. Malham Rock Wall Test
The next thing to try was something on a larger scale. The following rock wall was approximately 20 metres long by 3 metres high. I then had to spend quite a bit of time poly reducing and re-topologising in order to get anything useful for game-engine.
The asset below is even further stripped down for Web use and only really acts as a crude example of something captured on a larger scale.
Detailed Things.. Malham Boulder Test
Here’s a low res version of what was a very high resolution capture of a giant boulder from around Malham in North Yorkshire. The original capture consisted of 4 x 8192 resolution textures, which have had to be lowered and the mesh decimated in order to make it web usable.
Pen-y-Ghent
Part of the path leading to the summit.
The model on display here is a heavily decimated compared to the original source in order to not totally kill this web page; It was also captured in a rush with a limited number of photographs due to the number of people on the hill that day. It was more a test really to see how quickly I could grab something for the purposes of prototyping a few ideas.