Hello all. Can someone sense check my planned work flow.
I have some drone footage of a burned out building I need to make into a model. Im planning on using https://www.jawset.com/ to create a Gaussian splat/NERF which will then be exported as a PLY file. I will then take it into Meshlabs to clean it up and export. Can I go straight from Meshlabs to Sketchup Pro? or will I need another application to convert it to a usable file in Sketchup (maybe Blender)?
My gut feeling is you’ll end up with a very high poly file that SketchUp will struggle with - maybe not even textured. As there is going to be some of the same challenges that come with point clouds (difficulties with textures being one of them)
I’m just downloading postshot now to take a look, I’ve never tried actually creating a nerf or splat, so now seems like a good time to try!
I think the thing to remember is that this is an entirely different type of 3D compared to a mesh. It’s so incredibly different, it may not even be worth thinking about it as being in the same domain as SketchUp or Blender or 3DS max or whatever we typically think of when we think about 3D.
Thanks for your input. It feels like something worth exploring as it would create a massive leap in what is possible to model.
I would do more exploring but the restrictions on my work PC make it tedious to get approval for simple downloads and installations. so I’m trying to get my ducks in a row before I make the request.
I’ve had a play with the luma.Ai one and various other sfm softwares, but I I think it submitted to the cloud at the time and had something other limiting factors when it came to radiance fields.
Being able to do it on my PC seems better as I’ve got a decent amount of compute here.
Looking at what is coming out of the sfm generation, my point cloud is pretty sparse and I’m not sure how useable that would be for creating a mesh. I’ve got some old drone footage I’ve taken, I might give that a try and see how it ends up.
What are you hoping to get from the drone footage , mesh-wise?
Yes doing the work from my own PC rather than the cloud is what interested me as well (even if I dont have the best graphics card)
I have a burnt down warehouse I need to create some models of. As its a half burnt down ruin drawing it is going to be very complex and it will be difficult to focus on what the key structural elements are and what is ash. I was hoping I could use the available drone footage and photographs to generate a more accurate model.
These steps are my workflow for getting HQ 3d models from Reality Capture into SU. Only difference is it uses fbx instead of ply.
import the PLY into Blender,
do your cleaning in Blender and maybe also do a simplify.
once you’re happy with the model, break up the model into smaller logical chunks for instance in individual rooms, exterior etc.This will help with performance in SU.
export-selected the parts one by one in dae format to SketchUp.
If the ply is textured already, you shouldn’t have to do anything to export it with the texture applied.
I don’t know that modifier so I’m not sure what it does.
Does the ply use textures OR vertex colors?
Try this setting (Texture Options > Only Selected Map), it should work (if you applied the texture correctly). Make sure that from Blender you have saved the textures in the folder with the DAE file.
I normally don’t need to change anything in the export options when exporting a DAE file. Maybe export selected if you have multiple objects and you want to save them one by one.
I tried the “only selected” and it didnt work. Im trying an online converter but the file will be large as its not trimmed down. but we will see if it works if it finishes importing into Sketchup.
