Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

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TimmyD
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Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by TimmyD »

I have recently purchased a P16 and working night/day to learn this stuff. I also purchased Register360 Permanent. I have a few questions I hope someone can help me with. I have had 360 cameras for years but I am new to scanning.

1. Is it possible to use other 360 cameras to colorize the point clouds?
It seems that if you mounted a 360 camera at the precise vertical height as the scanner, colorizing the point cloud would be very easy with no parallax.

2. if you can only use the 60D-90D option, do I have to pay for the "external camera License" only if I mount the camera to the scanner?

3. If using the EOS camera, is it better to mount to scanner or use the Nodal Ninja setup?

Any guidance or links to understanding the complete workflow using external cameras will be appreciated!
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Re: Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by Mike Annear »

Hi Tim,
The Nodal Ninja will certainly work, but I am not sure how to apply the cubic Image with Register360 Permanent.
I have only used Cyclone Core for this application.
You might be able to use other 360 cameras, you just need to be able to output a cubic panorama format image using something like PT Gui.



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Re: Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by Dirkie2710 »

TimmyD wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:40 pm I have recently purchased a P16 and working night/day to learn this stuff. I also purchased Register360 Permanent. I have a few questions I hope someone can help me with. I have had 360 cameras for years but I am new to scanning.

1. Is it possible to use other 360 cameras to colorize the point clouds?
It seems that if you mounted a 360 camera at the precise vertical height as the scanner, colorizing the point cloud would be very easy with no parallax.

2. if you can only use the 60D-90D option, do I have to pay for the "external camera License" only if I mount the camera to the scanner?

3. If using the EOS camera, is it better to mount to scanner or use the Nodal Ninja setup?

Any guidance or links to understanding the complete workflow using external cameras will be appreciated!
Hi Tim,

Not sure about Reg360 and importing external camera imagery. Also can't really comment on item 2 or 3, but yes I use a 360 camera to colour the point cloud.

Issues are :
1. Photo resolution. Insta360 One X is only 18mp, Theta Z1 is 23mp, Kandao Qoocam is 30mp. You get the point. P16 can't be too different from a P50 we have, so a 12.5mm scan at 10m produces 10mill points (or 5025 x 2026) and 6.3m produces 10054 x 4050 (40mill). So you use a One X (18mp) and try to colorize a 12.5mm scan. 18million pixels to color 10mill points. That's ok, But colorizing 40m points from 18m pixels looks bad (I tried). A 3.1mm scan is ~20000x8100 so nearly 162mill points. Nearly 10x the camera res.

2. Getting completely and perfectly rid of parallax so it matches the scanner perspective completely is much harder than it actually looks. Merely having the camera centre perfect with the scanner doesn't mean it gets rid of parallax and all is well. Internal camera parallax on the 360s still exist, and can't get rid of it. There's a reason the iStar has a tool to calibrate a camera and a software package to color the data after the fact.

3. Having said all that it's not impossible and depends on the kind of misalignment you can live with when comparing the image to the cloud. I had a a few projects come up. Project 1 was 844 scans, 150 scans with P-series which HAD to be colour. Project 2 now stands at about 819 scans. 240 is P-series and had to be colour. So that's near 400 scans, with colour, at 3.1mm. That's ~14min per scan. So 5600min/93hours/11 day shifts of scanning. Drop that down to just the scan time (~3min) + around 40sec for imaging (taking scanner off, placing camera, taking image, replacing scanner). Total time <4min per scan. So the above equation drops to 1600hours/26hours/3.5days. Office time increases in that the image import and alignment increases importing time by about 50%. I got it all automated.

To me it's worth it, but requires R&D and getting processes in place to make sure it works every time as it should. Maybe send me a PM
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Re: Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by TimmyD »

Very helpful info!! As I continued to research, it seems that if you use an external camera source other than Canon xxD or iStax (ie Insta360 or Panono, etc), you have to have a Cyclone Model license.... which is cost prohibitive for me.

If I understood correctly, if I get the External camera license then I can use the 60D-90D cameras or the istax and there is no need for the Cyclone Model license??

Again, thank you for the great information. I should have my P16 first part of next week. Will keep reading and learning between now and then.
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Re: Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by TimmyD »

Mike Annear wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 11:05 pm Hi Tim,
The Nodal Ninja will certainly work, but I am not sure how to apply the cubic Image with Register360 Permanent.
I have only used Cyclone Core for this application.
You might be able to use other 360 cameras, you just need to be able to output a cubic panorama format image using something like PT Gui.



Mike
Thank Mike! I have PT Gui and others as I have been doing 360 stuff for quite some time. I just got my 15 day eval license this evening but it will be Thursday before I can play around with it. I will dive in and see if the cubic format is supported by Register 360 permanent. I certainly want to work towards a very efficient work flow and that will come from a lot of testing.
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Re: Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by steves01x »

The iStar works "perfect" with P40 and Cyclone core.... far, far quicker than hanging around for the scanner to take the images.

But if you want quality look at the Nodal Ninja or LizardQ that use a DSLR.

One thing, when importing the images to Cyclone Core (or it was the case last time) make sure they are all in their own individual folder!
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Re: Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by Ioannis »

I have found a very useful paper but I can not calculate very well the nodal point of my camera and lens.
Can anyone help me ?
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Re: Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by landmeterbeuckx »

steves01x wrote: Wed Mar 31, 2021 1:10 pm The iStar works "perfect" with P40 and Cyclone core.... far, far quicker than hanging around for the scanner to take the images.

But if you want quality look at the Nodal Ninja or LizardQ that use a DSLR.

One thing, when importing the images to Cyclone Core (or it was the case last time) make sure they are all in their own individual folder!
I used an istar with my tx5 before. For coloring pointclouds it worked well but i also used it for other purposes and it lacked quality. Scene had good batch processing tools for the istar, don't know about Leica.
Other systems may produce better results but take long so no gain here.
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Re: Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by Ioannis »

The above attached paper, have the offset of 2mm of the sigma lense as '' known'' the key is how to find the right nodal point easily of any lens and camera.
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Re: Can I use other 360 Cameras to colorize P16 Scanstation point cloud?

Post by TimmyD »

Ioannis wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:23 pm The above attached paper, have the offset of 2mm of the sigma lense as '' known'' the key is how to find the right nodal point easily of any lens and camera.
That link was very helpful for the Nodal Ninja workflow. I had created another post but this answers part of that. If I purchase the External Camera Kit and use a Canon xxD will I be able to bring that in to Register360? I can not find any current documentation that specifies the workflow and any required additional software. I only have a Register360 Permanent license (No Cyclone model, scan, or survey license) and trying to verify what would be required. Thanks again for the link you provided on the nodal ninja setup.
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