7 ms·

If you can, don't fuck with this shit and use/support open source software. https://alicevision.org/#meshroom https://alicevision.org/#meshroom

KarlKemp 5y ago
Yes, but the step-by-step guide has eight steps. And the first step cites five papers. But at no point (at whatever depth) does it tell me what to do.
- thot_experiment 5y ago
  I guess you're not in the "If you can" category then, seems basic reading comprehension is a fading art. I for one appreciate that the tutorial attempts to help you understand how the process works and why. Perhaps it's just my enormous brain at work but I found that when I opened the program up the "drag your images here" space and "start" button were pretty self-explanatory. (please read this with dripping sarcasm and imagine me rolling my eyes very hard) On a more serious note I really think meshroom has done a great job encapsulating a complicated process in a way that is simple to execute on the outset and yet affords the end user a great deal of control over what's going on. I really like the way they visualize the process with the node graph and that they cache the results at every step so you only ever have to recompute changes downstream of the node you've edited. I love tools that let me solve problems the toolmakers didn't specifically envision.
  - KarlKemp 5y ago
    I'll take the attempted insult. But at no point do you approach anything that would fall under the definition of "sarcasm", unless you're trying to agree with me. You're so far away from even mere irony that there will probably be rain or your wedding day (don't remember the song). Call me a cynic (it's in the dictionary), but I used to be insulted by smarter people. I shall have to think about that. Anyway... I've actually done photogrammetry (with the Apple API– wish I could share my excellent rubber ducky, but Wikimedia Commons doesn't quite like my file format). I was mostly just pointing out that I had different expectations from a "step-by-step guide", and that OP's wish of OSS adoption might be more effectively supported by making them want to do so, rather than shaming them with slogans from the mid-90s. Sometimes, a more powerful product is more complicated. But the same people who will eagerly post "correlation is not causation" on every science story as if that weren't the first thing any scientist learnt will happily pretend that something being difficult to use is evidence of and necessary for a more "professional" product.
    - thot_experiment 5y ago
      You're right that I'd definitely be doing more good if I wasn't being an dick about it, sorry. Though probably I shouldn't have engaged anyway. However, I am still drinking so despite my better judgement let's get into it on the facts of the matter at hand. (dang please forgive me for degrading the quality of HN) > mostly just pointing out that I had different expectations from a "step-by-step guide" Let's not pretend you were doing your best to communicate this in good faith with your original comment, but I shouldn't have been insulting, again, sorry. However you absolutely touched a nerve because as someone who's made it a point the last few years to try to switch to using only OSS Meshroom really does a comparatively bangup job of usability. > Yes, but the step-by-step guide has eight steps. Sure the guide could be written better, but it does a good job of explaining the process and a great deal of related minutia. > And the first step cites five papers. Come on now, if this isn't meant to paint it as some sort of inapproachable academic process (which is not the case at all) why mention it. > But at no point (at whatever depth) does it tell me what to do. Step Three absolutely clearly(ish) tells you what to do, and that step alone is enough to get a decent result. Yeah the formatting could be better, and yes there could be a quick start guide/TLDR that says "take a bunch of photos from a lot of angles without moving the object, drag them in and hit start" but come on, if you read through it it definitely does tell you what to do, hence the reading comprehension comment. Regarding sarcasm, certainly at least the bit about "my enormous brain" fits the definition.
      - KarlKemp 5y ago
        It's all good... And your enormous brain gets us into a paradox... :)
- Etheryte 5y ago
  I think the disconnect here is that you seem to think the step-by-step is a tutorial on how to use AliceVision, it isn't. It's a high level explanation of how the photogrammetry pipeline works. If it helps, you can think of it like a pop-sci article covering scientific research. If you're looking for a tutorial on how to use the tooling built around this pipeline, you can start with [0], found by clicking Meshroom in the menu and then the tutorial link. [0] https://meshroom-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/sketchfab/sketchfab.html https://meshroom-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/s...
- plorg 5y ago
  I tried installing Meshroom and it felt pretty rough, but it turns out I had simply failed to restart my Linux box after installing the CUDA toolbox. The software seems stable, though I'm still messing around trying to better understand it. My initial attempts with the default settings and a handful of photos of my mouse could use some work, and it's pretty slow on my box (an aging Xeon and about the oldest graphics card that's compatible with CUDA for this software). But it's interesting stuff, and better polished than a lot of research software I've worked with.
sixothree 5y ago
The thing that immediately turned me off about it is the fact that it is a phone app. Mobile apps all just feel like creepy spyware to me lately. "Send us photos of the things you are working on". Creepy weirdos is all I can think.
- amelius 5y ago
  I tried to install Acrobat reader on Android. It asked access to: - In app purchases (ok, I can pay, but only once please; not a fan of subscriptionware) - Identity (what for?) - Contacts (what for?) - Photos/Media/Files (Ok, I can understand it, but can I please allow only certain folders?) - Camera (again, what for???) - Wi-Fi connection information (what for?) Since it is all-or-nothing, I had to decline. And now I'm looking for another pdf reader without ads. This whole mobile shitshow is driving me nuts.
  - Geonode 5y ago
    My favorite is creative cloud and Autodesk desktop app both having several processes open all the time which reopen if you close them.
    - amelius 5y ago
      Recently found out that my Moto G4 phone is running an Android version of 4 years ago. It didn't run any security updates since, and without warning. And I can't upgrade. Phone hardware is perfectly fine otherwise. Google should be ashamed of themselves!
      - fooblaster 5y ago
        This isn't really directly Google's fault. hardware vendors refuse to support bsps for older hardware, much of which is closed source binaries that Google cannot maintain. You might notice the support window for pixel hardware that doesn't use Qualcomm socs is significantly longer.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
moffkalast 5y ago
Yeah was about to say "so.. meshroom but restricted to iphones only?". No thanks.
kmlx 5y ago
all for open source, but these are two different products. from their website: > To fully utilize Meshroom, a NVIDIA CUDA-enabled GPU is recommended. The binaries are built with CUDA-10 and are compatible with compute capability 3.0 to 7.5. Without a supported NVIDIA GPU, only "Draft Meshing" can be used for 3D reconstruction. versus an easy to use iphone app.
- Aardwolf 5y ago
  Somewhat off topic from the article, but I'm curious about GPU vs CPU computing here: So it looks like meshroom disables a feature (or features) when not having a Nvidia CUDA-enabled GPU, rather than e.g. still have the feature, but have it be slower. Any idea, if it were computed (or emulated) on CPU, how much slower it would be? (like 10x slower, 100x slower, 1000x slower, even more?!) And also, ignoring speed but instead looking at implementation effort, if it's feasible to emulate on CPU at all, or is GPU really so different for this that it's too much work to implement the same thing for a general purpose processor? At least matrix multiplication libraries (the main thing GPUs can do well afaik) exist for CPU too...
  - dr_zoidberg 5y ago
    From my experience with deep learning I can eyeball it: one or two orders of magnitude. The fine details may be different on this particular problem. In DL in general, if you have sort of equivalent CPU/GPUs (think a 5600 vs GeForce 3070) you'll find yourself in the range of 10 to 30x faster training with GPU. If you have substantially different platforms, you can start looking at 100x speedups or more. For example, my mobile 4600H CPU trains about 100x slower than a desktop GeForce 2060. And close to 300x faster than the old Intel 7200u I use as a "slow system" to test things. Which also has a GeForce 940MX, that trains about 30x slower than the 2060 (if you manage to make your model small enough to fit in 2GB of VRAM).

KarlKemp 5y ago

Yes, but the step-by-step guide has eight steps. And the first step cites five papers. But at no point (at whatever depth) does it tell me what to do.

thot_experiment 5y ago
I guess you're not in the "If you can" category then, seems basic reading comprehension is a fading art. I for one appreciate that the tutorial attempts to help you understand how the process works and why. Perhaps it's just my enormous brain at work but I found that when I opened the program up the "drag your images here" space and "start" button were pretty self-explanatory. (please read this with dripping sarcasm and imagine me rolling my eyes very hard) On a more serious note I really think meshroom has done a great job encapsulating a complicated process in a way that is simple to execute on the outset and yet affords the end user a great deal of control over what's going on. I really like the way they visualize the process with the node graph and that they cache the results at every step so you only ever have to recompute changes downstream of the node you've edited. I love tools that let me solve problems the toolmakers didn't specifically envision.
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  I'll take the attempted insult. But at no point do you approach anything that would fall under the definition of "sarcasm", unless you're trying to agree with me. You're so far away from even mere irony that there will probably be rain or your wedding day (don't remember the song). Call me a cynic (it's in the dictionary), but I used to be insulted by smarter people. I shall have to think about that. Anyway... I've actually done photogrammetry (with the Apple API– wish I could share my excellent rubber ducky, but Wikimedia Commons doesn't quite like my file format). I was mostly just pointing out that I had different expectations from a "step-by-step guide", and that OP's wish of OSS adoption might be more effectively supported by making them want to do so, rather than shaming them with slogans from the mid-90s. Sometimes, a more powerful product is more complicated. But the same people who will eagerly post "correlation is not causation" on every science story as if that weren't the first thing any scientist learnt will happily pretend that something being difficult to use is evidence of and necessary for a more "professional" product.
  - thot_experiment 5y ago
    You're right that I'd definitely be doing more good if I wasn't being an dick about it, sorry. Though probably I shouldn't have engaged anyway. However, I am still drinking so despite my better judgement let's get into it on the facts of the matter at hand. (dang please forgive me for degrading the quality of HN) > mostly just pointing out that I had different expectations from a "step-by-step guide" Let's not pretend you were doing your best to communicate this in good faith with your original comment, but I shouldn't have been insulting, again, sorry. However you absolutely touched a nerve because as someone who's made it a point the last few years to try to switch to using only OSS Meshroom really does a comparatively bangup job of usability. > Yes, but the step-by-step guide has eight steps. Sure the guide could be written better, but it does a good job of explaining the process and a great deal of related minutia. > And the first step cites five papers. Come on now, if this isn't meant to paint it as some sort of inapproachable academic process (which is not the case at all) why mention it. > But at no point (at whatever depth) does it tell me what to do. Step Three absolutely clearly(ish) tells you what to do, and that step alone is enough to get a decent result. Yeah the formatting could be better, and yes there could be a quick start guide/TLDR that says "take a bunch of photos from a lot of angles without moving the object, drag them in and hit start" but come on, if you read through it it definitely does tell you what to do, hence the reading comprehension comment. Regarding sarcasm, certainly at least the bit about "my enormous brain" fits the definition.
    - KarlKemp 5y ago
      It's all good... And your enormous brain gets us into a paradox... :)
Etheryte 5y ago
I think the disconnect here is that you seem to think the step-by-step is a tutorial on how to use AliceVision, it isn't. It's a high level explanation of how the photogrammetry pipeline works. If it helps, you can think of it like a pop-sci article covering scientific research. If you're looking for a tutorial on how to use the tooling built around this pipeline, you can start with [0], found by clicking Meshroom in the menu and then the tutorial link. [0] https://meshroom-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/sketchfab/sketchfab.html https://meshroom-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/s...
plorg 5y ago
I tried installing Meshroom and it felt pretty rough, but it turns out I had simply failed to restart my Linux box after installing the CUDA toolbox. The software seems stable, though I'm still messing around trying to better understand it. My initial attempts with the default settings and a handful of photos of my mouse could use some work, and it's pretty slow on my box (an aging Xeon and about the oldest graphics card that's compatible with CUDA for this software). But it's interesting stuff, and better polished than a lot of research software I've worked with.

sixothree 5y ago

The thing that immediately turned me off about it is the fact that it is a phone app. Mobile apps all just feel like creepy spyware to me lately. "Send us photos of the things you are working on". Creepy weirdos is all I can think.

amelius 5y ago
I tried to install Acrobat reader on Android. It asked access to: - In app purchases (ok, I can pay, but only once please; not a fan of subscriptionware) - Identity (what for?) - Contacts (what for?) - Photos/Media/Files (Ok, I can understand it, but can I please allow only certain folders?) - Camera (again, what for???) - Wi-Fi connection information (what for?) Since it is all-or-nothing, I had to decline. And now I'm looking for another pdf reader without ads. This whole mobile shitshow is driving me nuts.
- Geonode 5y ago
  My favorite is creative cloud and Autodesk desktop app both having several processes open all the time which reopen if you close them.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Recently found out that my Moto G4 phone is running an Android version of 4 years ago. It didn't run any security updates since, and without warning. And I can't upgrade. Phone hardware is perfectly fine otherwise. Google should be ashamed of themselves!
    - fooblaster 5y ago
      This isn't really directly Google's fault. hardware vendors refuse to support bsps for older hardware, much of which is closed source binaries that Google cannot maintain. You might notice the support window for pixel hardware that doesn't use Qualcomm socs is significantly longer.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

moffkalast 5y ago

Yeah was about to say "so.. meshroom but restricted to iphones only?". No thanks.

kmlx 5y ago

all for open source, but these are two different products. from their website: > To fully utilize Meshroom, a NVIDIA CUDA-enabled GPU is recommended. The binaries are built with CUDA-10 and are compatible with compute capability 3.0 to 7.5. Without a supported NVIDIA GPU, only "Draft Meshing" can be used for 3D reconstruction. versus an easy to use iphone app.

Aardwolf 5y ago
Somewhat off topic from the article, but I'm curious about GPU vs CPU computing here: So it looks like meshroom disables a feature (or features) when not having a Nvidia CUDA-enabled GPU, rather than e.g. still have the feature, but have it be slower. Any idea, if it were computed (or emulated) on CPU, how much slower it would be? (like 10x slower, 100x slower, 1000x slower, even more?!) And also, ignoring speed but instead looking at implementation effort, if it's feasible to emulate on CPU at all, or is GPU really so different for this that it's too much work to implement the same thing for a general purpose processor? At least matrix multiplication libraries (the main thing GPUs can do well afaik) exist for CPU too...
- dr_zoidberg 5y ago
  From my experience with deep learning I can eyeball it: one or two orders of magnitude. The fine details may be different on this particular problem. In DL in general, if you have sort of equivalent CPU/GPUs (think a 5600 vs GeForce 3070) you'll find yourself in the range of 10 to 30x faster training with GPU. If you have substantially different platforms, you can start looking at 100x speedups or more. For example, my mobile 4600H CPU trains about 100x slower than a desktop GeForce 2060. And close to 300x faster than the old Intel 7200u I use as a "slow system" to test things. Which also has a GeForce 940MX, that trains about 30x slower than the 2060 (if you manage to make your model small enough to fit in 2GB of VRAM).