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Pix4dcloud and 3d models

JDL

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any tips on getting a better result, I realize i'm using the cloud version and don't have the opportunity to clean up a point cloud. The main reason I went with pix4dcloud was for the delieverable, its in my opinion pretty great(client gets access to make annotations, measurements, etc. without login, simply through link). However, I believe that when I was testing drone deploy, my 3d models came out way better, even with no obliques. Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions on how they achieve better results without point cloud access, it would be appreciated.

JD
 
I am currently trying to pick between Pix4D and Agisoft Metashape. The major holdup is the 3D mesh.

I too found that Drone Deploy at times would have a better model than Pix4D or Agisoft.

I also found for my datasets Reality Capture outperformed them all in 3D models. They have pay per use so no need for subscription.

Your only control may be to get the best images you can. Proper overlap for the type of project and good sharp images. Don't forget you can get Pix4D mapper and then buy processing (sharing), but it starts at $750 for 10,000 images.

For me Pix4D makes great 3D mesh of the ground and terrain, but can really struggle with buildings, vehicles and equipment.

Try Reality Capture's pay per input, its free to process and test the system. You may be like me and find it's your 3D model goto and let Pix4D or Agi do the ortho and DEM.

What drone camera are you using?
 
I appreciate your input, I think I’m going to try DroneDeploy again, even on YouTube people’s models have been pretty impressive even just with nadir photos. My biggest complaint with DD during my trial was the deliverable, it seemed somewhat difficult in my opinion, where pix4D shines on that end, very user friendly with lots of features for a client, but the models just not on par with DD, in my opinion. If you have any DD experience regarding the deliverables please let me know, I’m looking for easy sharing and embedding. Last I checked, DD required your client to have an account? Don’t quote me on that though
 
I appreciate your input, I think I’m going to try DroneDeploy again, even on YouTube people’s models have been pretty impressive even just with nadir photos. My biggest complaint with DD during my trial was the deliverable, it seemed somewhat difficult in my opinion, where pix4D shines on that end, very user friendly with lots of features for a client, but the models just not on par with DD, in my opinion. If you have any DD experience regarding the deliverables please let me know, I’m looking for easy sharing and embedding. Last I checked, DD required your client to have an account? Don’t quote me on that though
That is definitely DroneDeploy's biggest downfall. It's easy enough to share as view-only where the client does not need to log in, but getting to the level where clients can do their own measurements is where it falls off the cliff. It's intentional though. The point of view is that it's either a drone services provider or an in-house team collecting and preparing the data for others to consume. It's much less common now than that someone like a construction company will have someone just fly for them and then they do all of their own takeoffs and if they were at that level than the client would probably already have their own account.. For some reason they haven't engineered the capability to do mask annotations that aren't saved to the system and actually they don't even have user based annotations which neither does anyone else, but that seems like it would be a pretty standard thing that all of these softwares should have. They require the user to either have a paid account or be part of the organization of an Enterprise account which is what we are on. All the other end needs is a free account and I can choose whether or not to make them an editor. Even Enterprise accounts only get so many analysts and editors before you have to pay for additional ones.
All that said during the boy has made so many improvements and additions so fast that it's only natural some of these basic things will fall through the cracks. They started as an autonomous flight software and are now a project management platform who's overall scale is much more mature than any other provider. We just started using their 360 walkthrough functionality and I must say it's pretty cool having Google Street view on your construction site.
 
I’ve tried and tried to improve the mesh output in Pix4D for 3D mesh of rock outcrops and just never came away with a satisfactory product that yielded an near “real” look end result. I trialed Bentley ContextCapture and upon the first successful (took a couple tries to figure out) I had a product that was immediately satisfactory. I didn’t have all the triangles that resulted in P4D, nor the blurred effects.
I’ve heard great things for the 3D output of Reality Capture as well, but never tried it. Agisoft had good reviews and moderate results, but I simply wasn’t pleased
With it either. Also tried SiteScan, which there oblique mission planner was great, but the output was just the same as P4D, and it should be noted that P4D is SiteScan’s processing engine, so not a surprise with output results
All that being said, and I’m sure you’re aware of after reading your post(s), if there isn’t sufficient imagery for reconstruction on the oblique side of the project then any software is going to have to supplement and digitize.
For my purposes, Context Capture is likely only comparable with Reality Capture. Unsure how they compare in pricing, but CC lives up to its bill for sure.
Best of luck sifting through all the hype that’s out there.
 
Make sure you include nadir images when wanting a really good 3D model. Spaces in between objects and horizontal aspects will stitch much better. Also, try to keep your ground sampled distance or distance from the object you are shooting as consistent as possible. This means that with oblique images you can actually get a little closer because the pitch of the gimbal captures objects further away.

Correlator 3D is a great processing option as well. Their bundle adjustment process is much better than Pix4D.

If you want really good 3D models you might want to think about a piece of software that's made specifically to edit Point clouds. We use Carlson Precision 3D. There is also recap, but Carlson Precision 3D is made specifically better for the complete survey side of things and matching objects to sites so you can combine several different point clouds together.
 
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OP, I have found a lot of inconsistency in 3D models with Drone Deploy, Pix4D and Agi Meta. Some models come out very good and some very bad in all three softwares.
Out of the 3 my best model came from Drone Deploy. This model looks like a picture from certain aspects and even picked up very small details. But some other models came out much worse.
One thing on this model is that Drone Deploy removed all of the thin items that would have noise around them like antenna, wires and the like.
Pix4D included these items and the same output was very bad visually.


Reality Capture's version was just as good, but all of their models come out very well.


I too have heard great things about Context Capture, they have a Youtube comparison to Agi Meta and the outputs are extremely better for that particular comparison.

OP, I know you want a single solution for ortho, point cloud and model, but you are going to have to accept that with cloud processing, you get what you get. You can only obtain the best images and correct orientation/overlap images you can and feed it to the cloud. Pix4D desktop and Agi Meta Pro will at least allow you to attempt to fix some things.

I know I keep saying it, but Reality Capture is free to test. It has a simple workflow when using the Map Wizard. You process your images and if you like the outputs you buy them from the per use pricing scheme (But you get to view the ortho, point cloud and model). You could use your Drone Deploy of Pix4D Cloud for your ortho, DEM and Point Cloud, and then if the client wants a high end 3D model use Reality Capture and charge them the price (marked up of course). It runs faster than Pix4D and Agi Pro in my tests too.

In the end there are a ton of incredible software out there and it is very hard to have to choose 1. I envy the shops and people who can afford to have several different softwares, but most of us with small shops have to make a very hard choice to buy the best for our use cases.
I've been "deciding" for months now and jump back and forth between Pix and Agi. You may lack a proficient work station for in house processing, but the desktop version would at least allow you to clean up the models, so for me having the take it or leave it from cloud processing is not what I want or will settle for.

Comparison Of the 4 using the simplest workflow with default settings. IMO Reality Capture wins hands down. BUT this is with this particular dataset, I have had different results from other datasets, BUT Reality Capture either hands down wins or pretty much ties the winner.

Agisoft Metashape Standard

1612751728014.png


Pix4D

1612751758814.png


Drone Deploy

1612751922603.png


Reality Capture

1612751956121.png


Close Ups

Agisoft

1612752585212.png

Pix4D

1612752621012.png

Drone Deploy

1612752651792.png


Reality Capture

1612752697964.png


Hope this helps give you some options and ideas.
 
And here is up real close in those models. Notice only Agisoft and Reality capture can truly capture thin items like telephone poles,

Agisoft Standard

1612753439937.png


Pix4D

1612753462119.png


Drone Deploy

1612753486233.png


Reality Capture

1612753552944.png
 
Hey thanks everyone for your input, i will definitely check out some different options. To answer an earlier question i'm using a phantom 4 pro. Thanks again
 
And here is up real close in those models. Notice only Agisoft and Reality capture can truly capture thin items like telephone poles,

Agisoft Standard

View attachment 2874


Pix4D

View attachment 2875


Drone Deploy

View attachment 2876


Reality Capture

View attachment 2877
Great examples, thanks for sharing! As you said, this is but one dataset and every algorithm has its own quirks. We found that while Reality Capture is better at structure reconstruction it suffers when true digital terrain maps are the endeavor and even though Correlator3D is very close to just as good at structures and better at terrain there is still no silver bullet. DroneDeploy is our workhorse, but very rarely do we require a cinematic quality structure model since we use digital design files for analysis. The is allot of beta work being done on their Structure Mode processing, but with it being a cloud template I doubt we will ever see the point density you can get from Metashape, Reality Capture or Correlator3D. Nor would you really want it with the ability to edit the point cloud be creating the textured mesh.
 
Great examples, thanks for sharing! As you said, this is but one dataset and every algorithm has its own quirks. We found that while Reality Capture is better at structure reconstruction it suffers when true digital terrain maps are the endeavor and even though Correlator3D is very close to just as good at structures and better at terrain there is still no silver bullet. DroneDeploy is our workhorse, but very rarely do we require a cinematic quality structure model since we use digital design files for analysis. The is allot of beta work being done on their Structure Mode processing, but with it being a cloud template I doubt we will ever see the point density you can get from Metashape, Reality Capture or Correlator3D. Nor would you really want it with the ability to edit the point cloud be creating the textured mesh.

I would rather be producing what you do, but at this time I do not have the skills, equipment and workflows. At my public safety job there is a mix of what is wanted. The GIS Specialist we work with wants the point cloud while nontechnical people are obsessed with a perfect, picture like mesh thinking that if the mesh is not perfect, somehow the data from the point cloud is not accurate. I love to show them on Pix4D where thin items either are absent or have a blob around them, but then in the point cloud they are represented well.

My project at determining beach erosion is progressing slowly and this is where the mesh is nice for showing stakeholders what the area looks like (They can view large areas, zoom, pan to their hearts desire), but the real volumes and cut and fill does not need this. The GIS specialist is more concerned with the point cloud and keeps insisting that we need to come up with ground control either as you call it "rough" for relative repeatability or absolute in order to make his job easier as he has to spend a lot of time lining up point clouds that are off up to a few meters in all directions.


OP if you are like me and not able to produce true maps and surveys and are looking more at giving stakeholders construction updates and the ability to do rough measurements, then I can see why possible clients obsess with the mesh. In the future I do want to be able to make real maps and work with surveyors but I am not there yet.

On my side gig I have done a real estate model that links to Matterport and that is where you want a picture perfect mesh.

Op keep us updated, at this point you and I are pretty much at the same place and I love to hear what others choose and how they go about things.
 
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nontechnical people are obsessed with a perfect, picture like mesh thinking that if the mesh is not perfect, somehow the data from the point cloud is not accurate.
You hit the nail on the head there. This is why we have an upcharge for the display of the textured mesh as a deliverable and if it is not contracted then we probably will only show them the point cloud rendered in Navisworks. We can explain the textured mesh and that it takes quite a bit of work to make it cinematic.
 
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