RealityCapture (RC) is

photogrammetry Photogrammetry is the science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant ima ...

software for creating

3D model In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical coordinate-based representation of any surface of an object (inanimate or living) in three dimensions via specialized software by manipulating edges, vertices, ...

s out of unordered photographs (terrestrial and/or aerial) or laser scans without seams. The most common fields of its current use are cultural heritage (art and architecture), full body scanning, gaming,

surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ...

, mapping,

visual effects Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action foota ...

(VFX) and

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), e ...

(VR) in general. It features include

image registration Image registration is the process of transforming different sets of data into one coordinate system. Data may be multiple photographs, data from different sensors, times, depths, or viewpoints. It is used in computer vision, medical imaging, mili ...

(alignment), automatic calibration, calculating a

polygon mesh In 3D computer graphics and solid modeling, a polygon mesh is a collection of , s and s that defines the shape of a polyhedral object. The faces usually consist of triangles ( triangle mesh), quadrilaterals (quads), or other simple convex ...

, colouring, texturing,

parallel projection In three-dimensional geometry, a parallel projection (or axonometric projection) is a projection of an object in three-dimensional space onto a fixed plane, known as the '' projection plane'' or '' image plane'', where the '' rays'', known as ...

georeferencing Georeferencing means that the internal coordinate system of a map or aerial photo image can be related to a geographic coordinate system. The relevant coordinate transforms are typically stored within the image file (GeoPDF and GeoTIFF are examples ...

, DSM, coordinate system conversion, simplification, scaling,

filtration Filtration is a physical separation process that separates solid matter and fluid from a mixture using a ''filter medium'' that has a complex structure through which only the fluid can pass. Solid particles that cannot pass through the filte ...

smoothing In statistics and image processing, to smooth a data set is to create an approximating function that attempts to capture important patterns in the data, while leaving out noise or other fine-scale structures/rapid phenomena. In smoothing, the data ...

, measurement,

inspection An inspection is, most generally, an organized examination or formal evaluation exercise. In engineering activities inspection involves the measurements, tests, and gauges applied to certain characteristics in regard to an object or activit ...

, and various exports and imports. The program can be run under the command line. There is also a software developer kit available. RealityCapture is able to mix camera images and laser scans. It is designed to make low demands on hardware. It works linearly, which means if its inputs are doubled, the processing time will be doubled as well. The software is currently available only in

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to t ...

Technical requirements

RealityCapture runs on

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A comp ...

machines with at least 8GB of RAM, 64bit Microsoft Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10, using a

graphics card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer mo ...

with an

nVidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

CUDA CUDA (or Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) that allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general purpose processing, an approach ...

2.0+

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mob ...

and at least 1 GB of RAM. Users can run the application and register images without the nVidia card but will not be able to create a textured mesh. Users must install the Media Feature Pack for Windows, and on

Windows Server Windows Server (formerly Windows NT Server) is a group of operating systems (OS) for servers that Microsoft has been developing since July 27, 1993. The first OS that was released for this platform was Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server. With the ...

users must install

Media Foundation Media Foundation (MF) is a COM-based multimedia framework pipeline and infrastructure platform for digital media in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11. It is the intended replacement for Microsoft Direc ...

features. Each RC

software license A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both sour ...

is limited to 32

CPU core A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

s and 3 GPU cards. For higher configurations, more licenses must be purchased equivalently. A computer with 4 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM and 386 CUDA cores is recommended. Meshing, coloring and texturing are completely

out-of-core In computing, external memory algorithms or out-of-core algorithms are algorithms that are designed to process data that are too large to fit into a computer's main memory at once. Such algorithms must be optimized to efficiently fetch and access da ...

in RC, which is intended to avoid RAM performance loss during these processes.

History

The

public beta A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

version of RealityCapture was released by Slovak company Capturing Reality (founded in 2013), based in

Bratislava Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approximately 140% o ...

, on 2 February 2016. However, there had also been a closed beta running for almost a year. Staff of Capturing Reality have published in several computer vision and graphics journals and conference papers, and have had hundreds of citations. Capturing Reality was acquired by

Epic Games Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, ...

in March 2021; Epic plans to integrate RealityCapture into the

Unreal Engine Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game '' Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genr ...

with the acquisition. The acquisition does not affect Capturing Reality's existing business and allowed them to reduce their pricing model for RealityCapture.

References

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External links

*https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Destinations/Creating_a_Destination Photogrammetry software 3D graphics software Computer-aided design software