MeshLab and Arc3D: Photo-Reconstruction and Processing of 3D meshes

P. Cignoni, M Corsini, M. Dellepiane, G. Ranzuglia,

(Visual Computing Lab, ISTI - CNR, Italy)

M. Vergauven, L. Van Gool

(K.U.Leuven ESAT-PSI - ETH Zrich D-ITET-BIWI)

Intro
Arc3d + MeshLab
a complete free software pipeline for the 3D digital acquisition based on standard photographic equipment Arc3D
A free web based 3D reconstruction service, you upload photos and you get sequences of aligned depth maps

MeshLab
An open source mesh processing system for cleaning, aligning and merging meshes and range maps.

Arc3D: Architecture
1. Record a sequence of images of a scene or object 2. Upload the images to the ARC server 3. The server computes the 3D reconstruction 4. Download the results from the ARC website 5. Process and Visualize the results with MeshLab

Arc3D: How it works

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The entire process is based on finding matches between images

Arc3D: the output

For each submitted image a depth image is reconstructed
an image with the distance from the camera for each pixel a quality estimation for each pixel

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All these depth images must be

cleaned and filtered integrated into a full model.

A typical Epoch - CI Tool

MeshLab - an epoch result
Developed at ISTI - CNR

Just an example of the kind of tools that we are targeting for building the pieces a common infrastructure tool chain Domain
Digital representations of 3D shapes

Objectives
Linking together input and output of different CH apps Adapting data from one CH app to another (mesh processing!)

MeshLab
Generic mesh processing tool Open source GPL avail for win, mac and linux
(scheduled for inclusion inside debian-science)

The system relies on a large GPL library for mesh processing

Aimed to the (almost) automatic processing of large unstructured 3d models

acquired 3D models are different from human built models
No structure, no particular need of a scene graph Large datasets : millions of primitives

MeshLab
Able to manage many different kind of mesh formats Input format PLY, STL, OFF, OBJ, 3DS, COLLADA, PTX, X3D, VRML Output format PLY, STL, OFF, OBJ, 3DS, COLLADA, X3D, VRML, DXF

MeshLab dissemination
License GPL Code size: 35k + 65k LOC (>20 py estimated ) V1.0.0 (march 2007)
Downloaded >30k times, Web site served more than 400k pages more then 2000 faithful users (users that opened more than 50 meshes), hundreds of university and research centers using it all over the world

V1.1.0 (feb 2008) Downloaded 5k times in three weeks

MeshLab typical tasks

Filtering
Removal of outliers according to various heuristics

Smoothing out noise

Various fairing algorithms

Editing
Selection of parts and removal of non interesting portions of the acquired data

Remeshing
Subdivision Surface (loop and butterfly) Reducing complexity through simplification
Both fast approximate and slower high quality algorithms 500k 50k 5k

Checking
Visual inspection
See through filters

Quality evaluation
Curvature dependent,

Automatic marking of mesh inconsistencies

topological: non manifoldness Geometric: self intersection

Repairing
Hole Filling
Automatically interpolate small missing mesh portions filling small gaps

MeshLab: Aligning and Merging

3D Scanning Pipeline Tools
ICP based alignment Including global alignment for error redistribution Surface reconstruction algorithms for range map merging

MeshLab Features
Aligning functionalities needed to bring together models reconstructed from different sequences:

MeshLab Features
Merging tools can be used for blending all the reconstructed range maps into a single (eventually watertight) mesh Various surface reconstruction algorithms
Poisson Surface Reconstruction
Watertight mesh, sometimes can invent too much

Volumetric distance field

Preserve and blend color information Do not fill large holes

MeshLab Recon. Sample

Arc du triomphe >100 photos ~1M triagles reconstructed model No texture here to better show the geom quality. Reconstructed with the distance field approach

MeshLab Recon. Sample

One of the two lions in the Loggia della Signoria in Florence >30 photos 200k triangles reconstructed model Hi quality color reconstructed Reconstructed with the distance field approach

MeshLab Recon. Sample

A Lion statue from the Portalada in Ripoll, a large romanic portal, near Barcelona >60 photos 600k triangles reconstructed model No color but watertight Reconstructed with the Poisson surface reconstruction alg.

PhotoCloud Prototype

A new way to use the results of Arc3D

Do not aim to a clean 3D mesh model, but retain and exploit all the original photos information

PhotoCloud Prototype
Basic ideas
Mix a rough 3D with (many) High Res photos Allow free navigation in 3D space and in the space of the images Allow to to take measure on photos Work in remote, everything (3D and photos) is stored on a standard web server
You can show your reconstruction results without requiring that people download giga sized datasets

Conclusions
Download and play by yourself! Both tools are ready to use and tested.
http://www.arc3d.be http://meshlab.sourceforge.net Thanks for your attention!