LC fans

Discuss Z+F Laser Control software here.
jedfrechette
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Re: LC fans

Post by jedfrechette »

When shooting HDRs what image file formats can they be exported to?
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Re: LC fans

Post by hypsometric »

all the usual suspects... are you asking about a HDR formats for other apps such as 3d environment textures?
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Re: LC fans

Post by dhirota »

Jed:

At each scan position, you can save a raw scan, *.zfs file and one *.zfi, HDR image folder containing 44 images. The zfs file and zfi folder can be downloaded separately.

Z+F Laser Control software can post process the zfi folder to produce several different image formats (jpg, png, tif, zfs with the image) as one 2X1 spherical/panorama individual file or one rgb_zfs file. If you need to convert it, the best would probably be a tif.

Here are a few screen shots from a virtual tour, using the jpg from the HDR RGB images that have been reduced from 1920 to 1000 pixels to fit the forum format. The original project consisted of 400+ scans of the inside and outside of a historic school complex that is being demolished for new facilities. It happens to be the school that President Obama, myself and the rest of my family attended, so it is pretty special for us to document it.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Dennis Hirota, PhD, PE, LPLS
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Re: LC fans

Post by jedfrechette »

hypsometric wrote:are you asking about a HDR formats for other apps such as 3d environment textures?
Yeah, so I would be looking for something like .exr or .hdr, maybe .dng or floating point .tif.

I've seen lots of nice tone-mapped LDR images come out of the z+f camera but I've never been able to determine if you can actually get an HDR image out of the system or not.
dhirota wrote:If you need to convert it, the best would probably be a tif.
Are these floating point tifs or are they 8-bit tone-mapped LDRs?
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Re: LC fans

Post by dhirota »

The only 96 bit images in exr or hdr format that we have used with our Z+F has been our Spheron. The images needed to be tone-mapped into something else like jpg or png for display, so we use it less frequently because of the extra steps required and extra equipment to be hauled around.
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Re: LC fans

Post by Jamesrye »

I am interested in trying Laser Control for registration. As a Cyclone user, I am very happy with that programs registration abilities since it can cope with registering hundreds of scans.

I've tried out SCENE, but couldn't really get along with it (I didn't like the traffic lights or the lack of a 'registration diagnostics' page) and I found it very tough to register more than 50 scans or so. I also used RiSCAN Pro (actually this was way back in 2007!) and this program was excellent, though I've not tried it out recently.

Anyway, I'm interested in Laser Control and have some questions:

- Can it cope with large projects?
- Does it provide registration diagnostics - residuals etc...
- Can it cloud register data?
- Is there a batch exporter (or do you have to export scans one by one?)
- Are there any advanced functions (comparable to Cyclone's 'region grow) for cleaning up the clouds
- Are there any Unique Selling Points for Laser Control?
- What's lacking in Laser Control?

I'm interested in user experiences as I'm looking to purchase more 'Cyclone registration' licenses in the future - and it's good to understand what capabilities alternative software offers.
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Re: LC fans

Post by rwalker »

Also a big fan of LC here. Scantra plane to plane with a good amount of well surveyed targets is a 1-2 knockout punch. I rarely if ever see mis-alignments in the final cloud, and never have to mess around with any manual stuff/hair pulling.

No one has mentioned that LC can take a stitched panorama (think iStar) and automatically colorize your data. I like it a little better than ColorCloud because it keeps all your data together inside LC, no need to export e57. The alignment can be a few pixels off (up to 5 or 6 maybe), but I think that has more to do with the iStar stitching software than LC.
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Re: LC fans

Post by Obinna »

Hi, I hope this help:
- Can it cope with large projects? Yes it can cope with large projects. We have used it on a project that has more than 2500 scans
- Does it provide registration diagnostics - residuals etc... Yes it provides registration diagnostics.
- Can it cloud register data? I really do not know what this mean, hence, I haven't tried it.
- Is there a batch exporter (or do you have to export scans one by one?) Yes. There is batch export. And its very easy to do.
- Are there any advanced functions (comparable to Cyclone's 'region grow) for cleaning up the clouds. Never tried it on both LC and Cyclone. I will be glad if I can get a workflow on how to do this, so that i can try it on a data here.
- Are there any Unique Selling Points for Laser Control? Yes. Speed, Target acquisition is very fast (especially manual target is very accurate). Imagine that size of data with an error of 3mm and less.
- What's lacking in Laser Control? Still digging to find out.

I hope your answers are answered.
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Re: LC fans

Post by dhirota »

Henry:

Glad to see you finally got on the LSF and helped with the answers to the questions with your project from Nigeria.
It would be great to see some overall screen shots of your project.

Jed:

It would be interesting to take the ZFI files and to see if we could generate some *.exr or *.hdr files from them. I will check it out at Intergeo 2015 in a few weeks.
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Re: LC fans

Post by Obinna »

Hi Dennis,

Yea, I made it through now. I really would have love to uploaded some snapshots of our data but I cant because it no more in my custody. Its been Archived and with our IT team and getting such data out is a big deal. But when next I work on such data, I will upload some snapshots for members to share from.
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