Hi! I have the Miraco Pro and I’ve been practicing for some time.
I often scan dark objects and have had decent success with the common techniques (scan spray, manually setting the exposure setting to the max, etc)
I’m seeing inconsistent behavior when comparing feature scanning in “Dark Mode” vs Marker scanning.
The dark mode feature scanning by far works the best for dark objects and I’m quite pleased with its results. But if I switch to marker mode to scan featureless objects the level of black I can pickup seems to be far less. Significantly so, even after setting exposure to max.
(I want to clarify that when I was comparing the two modes I was scanning the exact same object, same distance, same environmental lighting, and the object had enough features to be feature scanned)
This means I’m fairly limited on options when I’m scanning featureless objects that I can’t spray with scan spray (sensitive objects).
Why does marker mode have a lesser ability to scan dark objects than feature mode?
I don’t understand what would cause this from a software perspective as the Miraco should be able to apply the same parameters as dark mode while doing a marker scan.
Marker mode uses markers to replace object features , so you are able to scan any object regardless of its features .
Dark mode only increase exposure what allows dark materials to be captured better , yet the object needs features to be able to be tracked.
The exposure it increased internally on top of the manual settings
Laser mode do have additional brightness for the lasers and exposure that why it allows to scan darker objects
Laser mode do not use feature scanning due to its very small individual frames.
Completely 2 different scanning technology here.
Impossible to apply the same rules as feature scanning have only one setting for sensors .
The power limitations of infrared or blue light is limited due to consumer safety and other factors that don’t allows to increase it’s power.
I just had a similar experience to what the OP described.
I was trying to scan a part that was about 300x500x200mm with large flat surfaces. Dark mode was mostly working well, but would start to loose tracking in some areas.
I decided to cover the entire part in markers, and then it refused to auto adjust brightness and just plain simply struggled to capture the black features of the part, manual or auto brightness.
I even tried bringing the part outside to scan.
In the end I just accepted a partial scan, as it had enough detail to model what I needed to work with.
MIRACO uses infrared , it can scan in complete darkness, it is not about visible light so bringing it outside or not don’t really matters.
All about the material you scanning and not the color itself .
Black cotton fabric will scan exactly as white cotton fabric without any difference, it is about how much the surface absorb and reflect the infrared light , pure physics here and nothing else.
And for more difficult situations there are helpers as 3D spray , or home made solution that helps to reflect better the infrared light back to its sensors .
Remember outdoor lighting produce infrared , it can make the objects invisible to the sensors by distracting the infrared patterns projected on the surface , same with some indoor light source that produce infrared .
Dark mode increase the sensor exposure almost double vs the normal settings. So having dark mode outdoors will pick not only the infrared patterns but also the infrared produced by the day light.
Dark mode works on dark objects , markers would be too much exposed using darker mode and totally invisible since they are reflective / white also the black area around the markers will be overexposed making them not usable at all as markers .the black circle need to be invisible to be handled as marker
need to be invisible to be handled as marker