| Q&A |
 Elmer
Bol,
Alice Labs
October 2009 |
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“
There are multiple triple A title games that use scanning
too, such as for roads of grand prix tracks.
Point clouds are important to these kinds of projects
because so much relies on the composition of real world
footage and Cg. When there is an accurate match, the
results will be much better. Alice Labs offers the possibility
of point clouds in Max and Maya and let you thereby
bypass crooked software solutions. ”
<
Studio Clouds plugin (Autodesk Maya) |
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| Q1 |
Could
you please give a brief presentation of Alice Labs? |
| A1 |
Alice
Labs is a young fresh company with sophisticated expertise.
Although the company itself is recently founded, the initiators
were involved in the early days of mid-range laser scanning
. They come from different backgrounds and expertise with academic
degrees, ranging from game engine development to chemistry.
Currently 6 people are involved in the development process of
the Studio Clouds products.
Frustrated by the fact that no good software solutions for laser
scanning appeared they joined forces in building software solutions
themselves. They believe that the work-flow for building photo
realistic 3D content can be considerably improved with the help
of laser scanning and photogrammetry.
It started with building a point cloud engine that surpassed
the current state-of-the-art. The Mirage™ engine comprises
the backbone of the Studio Clouds software solutions and is
based on a 64-bit multi-core architecture and relies on graphic
card acceleration for maximum speed. By being heavenly involved
in the academic world it's possible to integrate the best algorithms
in the Studio Clouds suite of products. |
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| Q2 |
DCC
software such as 3ds max mostly use triangles to represent
geometry. Can point
clouds be combined with mesh? |
| A2 |
Yes,
we visualize the point clouds within the 3ds Max viewport as
if they are part of the max scene. However they are not handled
like the meshes, the properties of the point cloud are handled
through the Studio Clouds Plug-in. For actual editing of point
clouds the Studio Clouds Editing module can be used. |
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| Q3 |
Can
Studio Clouds generate mesh from point clouds data? |
| A3 |
Not
currently, although we are working on a module for modeling
which will include meshing. However there are already great
solutions for creating meshes such as using the render of
Max to calculate displacement maps (cloud vs planes) or to
model on top of the point cloud with the tools provided in
the plug-in. |
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| Q4 |
Point
clouds can be generates from laser scanner, those equipments
used to be very expensive. Do you believe that it will become
more and more affordable ? |
| A4 |
Yes,
because they are built in larger quantities and there is more
competition. As a result the price will come down. But there
is also a huge market for other point cloud acquiring solutions
such as photogrammetry and computer vision. |
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| Q5 |
Could
you please give us few examples where point clouds have been
successfully used? |
| A5 |
 Large
parts of the castles you see in the Harry Potter Films are
based on scanned data. Scenes form lord of the rings would
not be possible without laser scanning, they used massive
scanning for prop and digital terrain models. There are multiple
triple A title games that use scanning too, such as for roads
of grand prix tracks.
Point clouds are important to these kinds of projects because
so much relies on the composition of real world footage and
Cg. When there is an accurate match, the results will be much
better. Just like for Building and Constructions (BIM) projects,
when you design something you want it to fit reality, point
clouds offer you that precision. Alice Labs offers the possibility
of point clouds in Max and Maya and let you thereby bypass
crooked software solutions.
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| Q6 |
Can
point clouds be converted to Voxel? It seems that those two
methods are similar, isn't? |
| A6 |
Yes,
there are similarities but they are handled differently. We
prototyped different engine solutions and what we currently
have is best for performance. |
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| Q7 |
3D
point clouds data are often partial (occlusion problems) is
it possible to "fill holes" with Studio Clouds? |
| A7 |
Yes,
by modeling the missing geometry in Max or Maya or by using
the copy tool in the Editor. It is not automatically done but
new solutions will be integrated in the modeling module. |
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| Q8 |
Is
it possible to render point clouds with Studio Clouds? Does
it support materials? |
| A8 |
Yes,
we are proud to claim that we are the first to integrate off-line
rendering options in Max with massive point clouds. So point
clouds can be used to cast shadow or reflect on surfaces. |
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| Q9 |
Do
you plan to develop a standalone version of Studio Clouds, or
versions for Softimage, Cinema4D? |
| A9 |
 We
are developing a stand alone version of Studio Clouds with modules
such as registration, modeling and editing. It will effectively
be a stand alone point cloud processing solution. We also want
to be the first company to have a point cloud solution for Mac
OSX.
Too few people requested Softimage or Cinema4D. Our engine is
flexible enough to adapt to these packages so if there is interest
we will consider it. |
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| Q10 |
Point
clouds needs a lot of memory : could you tell us a bit more
about hardware requirements (32/64 bits systems, memory, graphic
card?) |
| A10 |
In
general an average recent gaming graphic card performs very
well with regards to the software, however the newer the core
the better the performance.
There are huge advantages to be gained by using better hardware
and new technologies such as solid state disks! Our engine can
use as much internal memory as you want because of our 64bit
core. We stream data from hard-disk but the more internal memory
you will use the better the performance. But our streaming technology
is refined enough to perform very well on a mid-range system
too. |
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