B34.

Virtual scan and gridding

Virtual scan and gridding

Here you will learn how to use a special JRC 3D Reconstructor tool, called virtual scan. It allows you to virtually scan the 3D world with your models, with a lot of useful applications. The gridding procedure is also covered here, that allows you to effectively cover holes in your grid point clouds.

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These tools are useful for

1. Giving structure to unstructured point clouds, allowing easy meshing, sectioning, etc. 2. Integrating separate scans, coming from different sources (e.g. terrestrial and airborne) into a single scan or dataset. 3. Performing basic mesh editing: meshes can be cut into smaller user-defined portions 4. Gluing meshes into a single mesh 5. Performing conversions between data types: clouds to meshes, selections of meshes to clouds, etc. 6. Filling holes in grid point clouds representing e.g. territorial surfaces

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Table of contents
1. 2. Introduction to Virtual Scan Virtual scan from perspective camera Slide 4 Slide 5 Slide 8 Slide 10 Slide 12 Slide 14 Slide 18

3. Virtual scan from ortho camera 4. Virtual scan from cylindrical camera 5. Virtual scan from spherical camera 6. Gridding 7. Cubemap function

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Introduction to Virtual Scan

Virtual scan is a powerful tool of JRC 3D Reconstructor, that allows you to virtually scan your 3D models from a user-defined viewpoint. You can create four types of scanning objects in your 3D world: 1. Perspective cameras 2. Orthographic cameras 3. Cylindrical cameras 4. Spherical cameras These are created via the menu Survey Create camera (see also B46) Each camera has the capability of scanning everything that it sees in the 3D world, with a grid pattern. This can result in a new grid point cloud, or in an image. Virtual scan is particularly fast, since it is performed on the graphics card. The resolution of the resulting grid can be set. To perform a virtual scan, right-click on a camera item and select Scan tools Virtual Scan Here four examples will be shown, one for each camera type

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Virtual Scan from perspective camera

The picture shows a perspective camera pointing inside the dome, from down upwards. Right-click on the camera item Scan tools Virtual scan opens the interface in the next slide

The following convention holds for all the camera types: The negative z direction (blue axis) is the cameras viewing direction The y direction (green axis) is the images vertical axis The x direction (red axis) is the images horizontal axis

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Virtual Scan from perspective camera

Set here the resolution

Choose if camera aspect ratio should be kept

A B C D

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Pressing Add grid point cloud to project D in the dialog of the previous slide, a new grid point cloud is added to the project: the new cloud is shown on the right. Note the Moir patterns that show that the dome has been sampled according to a regular grid pattern The virtual scan can be saved also as image (useful for ortophotos and prospects) by clicking the button B

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Virtual Scan from othographic camera

We show now an ortographic camera scanning the same dome from the same position as before.

Cameras axes convention still holds: negative z direction (blue axis) is the viewing direction.

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Virtual Scan from othographic camera

The dome is ortographically projected on the focal plane of the camera. Therefore, in this case pixels acquire metrics. The interface shows also the volume of the sampled points integrated on the focal plane.
C

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Virtual Scan from cylindrical camera

This example deals with a cylindrical camera that scans the dome from inside out.

Longitude begin ( -180)

Length (m)

Longitude end ( -180)

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Virtual Scan from cylindrical camera

This is the result of the cylindrical virtual scan. Note that the internal surface of the dome has been captured on the plane according to a cylindrical projection. Also, the pixel metrics on x axis are now expressed in degrees/pix.

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Virtual Scan from spherical camera

Here the dome is scanned from inside out with a spherical camera.
Latitude begin ( 90)

Longitude begin ( -180)

The viewing direction of the spherical camera (negative z axis, in blue) is the direction of 0longitude and 0latitude

Longitude end ( -180)

Latitude end ( -90)

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Virtual Scan from spherical camera

Result of virtual scan with spherical projection. Pixel metrics are now specified in degrees.

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Gridding: closing holes in grid point clouds

When doing a Virtual Scan with an OrthoCamera, the button Gridding ( on Slide 9) is enabled. Clicking it opens the dialog below.
C

Gridding: closing holes in grid point clouds, via kriging technique. Kriging consists in interpolating a points value with a linear combination of neighboring pointsvalues, using a linear estimator. Three kriging algorithms are available. The first is usually too imprecise, the third too expensive. The second is the most used. Kriging is very effective on data related to geosurfaces

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Gridding example: virtual scan from orthocamera placed inside the dome

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Virtual Scan dialog before gridding Virtual Scan dialog after gridding: green points have been just interpolated from the other

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Gridding result

Green points can be filtered (grid pre-processing) and colored in a successive stage

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Cube map example

Besides saving a grid point cloud and an image, the virtual scan also offers the possibility of saving a cubemap Example: consider the perspective projector shown on the right. It is placed inside the dome. By doing a virtual scan from it, and then selecting the save cube map button (
A

on Slide 6), a cube map

is saved, consisting of six images.

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The cube map is composed of six images, representing six virtual scans taken along the six orthogonal directions of a 3D coordinate system centered in the optical center of the camera

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Cube map result

Look front

Look behind

Look down

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Cube map result

Look up

Look left

Look right