Match Modeling – setting reference images
Jeacom writes:
So last video I showed how easy could be to model over a video as reference using the motion tracker. Well the technique can be simpler, we don’t need a video at all, it turns out that we can do the same with a few pictures as an image sequence.
Here is a video showing how to use kinda arbitrary pictures as good aligned reference images.
I like to call this MatchModeling mostly because sounds cool LOL, but well, it kinda makes sense…
really!!!! are you kidding me? its cute usage of camera tracking!
Groundbreaking (for me, at least) again! (:
Thanks for posting the refined method. It’s especially useful, when you can take higher resolution/quality stills than videos.
The “official” name of this method is “Photomodeling” or “Imagemodeling”.
Some softwares was previously specialized in this area, such as “ImageModeler”, initialy developped by RealViz, then aquiered by Autodesk.
It was one of my speciality between 2003 and 2006. I made a LOT of photomodeling and 3D matte-painting during this period for different shots, before switching to a more photogrametric workflow.
For French speakers, I made a conference long long time ago about image modeling and 3D tracking with Blender :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0adnFuzSJTk
Thank you for your videos. This technic will be always reliable, even if you have only two images of the same environment, and it’s good to see it again. :)
I do a lot of 3D modelling of furniture for a company based off real world products. I do something like this, I do a quick photogrammetry of the item I’m making to get at least bare minimum a point cloud of the shape. Even if it’s not a great 3D scan (which it usually isn’t, photogrammetry hates black and chrome – aka 90% of the furniture I have to recreate), it doesn’t matter as long as the software gives me something roughly the right shape so I don’t have to manually measure things to keep it all roughly in the right proportions. I think it speeds up the workflow.
You can find free photogrammetry software and for the photos I just need my phone, so it’s a nice low budget solution for making accurate models of real world objects.
Why don’t you just use photogrammetry and retopo afterwards?
Sometimes photogrammetry won’t produce great results. It really depends on the subject matter.
For example, for tree strumps or brick walls, photogrammetry can produce amazing 3D scans, but for something made out of black & slightly shiny plastic, or chrome/shiny metal, or transparent glass or plastic, photogrammetry can produce only vague shapes at best.
Photogrammetry is dependent on surfaces looking more or less the same from every angle, and on having feature points along those surfaces to detect and follow from multiple angles, in order to compute their depth/position.
For some kinds of surfaces, that just isn’t possible, and when you attempt photogrammetry on them, all you get is a messy blob that barely resembles the shape you were trying to scan.
Sometimes though, with a little extra work, putting stickers on things, covering up transparent areas, etc, you can get a rough approximation that works as a nice guideline for manual 3D modelling.
Also photogrammetry for hard surface shapes generally looks awful in comparison to something modeled by hand, it doesn’t retain the hard edges of smooth lines, etc. Photogrammetry works best for organic complex shapes like rocks, trees, etc.
Would this be a good technique for modeling from movie or television props?
if you can get two different angles and 8 reference points on the same camera.