Forgive me if this idea already exists or if I have made errors within my current workflow.
I am a student currently reading architecture and developing reality scanning techniques and workflows into virtual reality and I have come across some limitations with the packages on offer.
My current workflow to combine / collage multiple reality scans in a common environment within Microstation and then Unity 3D:
- Context Capture - 2no. productions of a reality scan, one with texture and one geometry only.
- Descartes - Mesh geometry editing to 'clean up' messy scans
- Context Capture - Update the mesh geometry and resubmit the textured production for processing
- OUTPUT = a cleaned OBJ mesh
- Reference OBJ mesh into Microstation - textures are scrambled
I figured the errors were due to the OBJ or texture maps being named in a unique fashion. Here is my workaround:
- Context Capture - 2no. productions of a reality scan, one with texture and one geometry only.
- Descartes - Mesh geometry editing to 'clean up' messy scans
- Context Capture - Update the mesh geometry and resubmit the textured production for processing
- OUTPUT = a cleaned OBJ mesh
- MeshLab - use this tool to rename mesh and mesh texture maps in a unique fashion
- Reference OBJ mesh into Microstation
- Export FBX for use in UNITY 3D
PROBLEM - export of FBX from Microstation Connect has inconsistent results. Mostly the textures do not work or are scrambled. Microstation V8i has to be used to export to FBX with textures correctly, but it cant handle the file sizes.
So my idea: Improve workflow from ContextCapture to Microstation (and then beyond) the current workflow explained above is neither efficient nor elegant in its use of different programs to achieve an inconsistent result. For example, reality mesh and texture map data from a Bentey Systems package (ContextCapture) is not uniquely named. Meaning even when imported to another Bentley Systems Software it does not map textures correctly. This triggered the requirement for the additional step within the workflow using MeshLab to re-map textures.
Furthermore when dealing with large files Microstation Connect Edition (64bit) handled things very well. However, when exporting to FBX its texture allocation was somewhat sporadic, some files would work, others would not. The solution, albeit clumsy, slow and time consuming was to use Microstation V8i (32bit) to export these files - time consuming due to the ridiculous number of program crashes you would experience.
Example:
