Product Review: Strata’s Foto3D CX 2

The Trouble with Superman

I took one of my son’s Action Figures, a 12-inch tall Superman figure, and set it up to process.  Again, I took 18 pictures and loaded them in.  Because of the bright colors in Superman (fully saturated reds and blues), it took significantly more work to generate the masks, taking me approximately an hour.

Superman Masked

With the masks in-place, I then proceeded to let Foto3D CX generate the geometry and textures.  The result is better seen than explained:

Most of the model is ok: the head and feet, the chest, the back of his cape.  Unfortunately, there was no color change of his cape in the area between his chest and arms, making it impossible to determine any change.  The result is that the system believed it was a solid piece, and meshed it so that there is a solid between his arms and chest.  Attempting to map textures onto this incorrect geometry results in the odd blurred region.

This problem is solvable, however.  Foto3D allows you to indicate separate images for Geometry & Texture.  If you had a more professional, repeatable rig, then you could do this.  To do so you would need:

• Stationary Camera Tripod
• Rotary Turntable to hold the model & Marker
• Better lighting & Background

Then you could take the “Color” shots, all 18 of them.  Then, you could mark up the inside of superman’s Cape (add a grid pattern via a simple Sharpie marker, or possibly tape/glue something like a grid or checkerboard pattern to the inside of his cape), and shoot pictures to be used for geometry.

Unfortunately, my photography rig is nowhere near this advanced.  If I have more time & can find the appropriate equipment, I may tackle this again.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a visualization scientist working for a federal research lab, aiding researchers to discover the insights buried within their terabyte datasets generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. He also runs VizWorld.com .