Scan alignment with a plane

How is everyone aligning scans with a plane, such as with fusion? I got my scans looking pretty good but they import at some funky angles. I’d like to have at least one surface put on a x,y,z plane.

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I use Blender, mainly because I want to learn it more, its free and awesome. Import the model then rotate manually in x, then y, then z until you’re happy. Holding shift down whilst wiggling the mouse will rotate fractions of a degree - plus you can also type the angle you want to change.

If you have a flat base on the object, you could decimate the points to get a good average, and then snap it to a plane. If you search for that on the web you’ll see what I mean.

There are loads of programs that can do this, what would be really nice is the ability for the software to add primitives by selecting points or an average of points, to create a plane or cylinder (bolt holes etc) - big wish I know :wink:

As it happens I just eyeball it.

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Here’s a thought, have a tool in Handy Scan do the alignment!

After all, wouldn’t you want the original scan to have some chosen alignment right at the beginning?

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That would be so helpful!! Pick 2 points on a plane and assign it to x,y,or z. Bam!

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and pick one point and assign it to 0,0,0 coords.

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this is essentially what you can do in meshmixer. select points or draw a selection and then it’ll try to align based off that obviously it works best with a flat area but it works pretty well :slight_smile:

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I wish it had an accelerometer/ gyro in it so it knew positioning … not only would it help from a tracking standpoint by using that into the solving data it would be useful for putting it in the right position without having to move anything :slight_smile:

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You’d get way too much drift on such a system and it’d add a lot of cost. If you’ve ever used position capture devices you’ll see why they all use optical triangulation and not a gyro/acc.

I’ve had very little issues with tracking but I use a funky tripod that can get just about anywhere. Use the gimbal on it and you rarely lose track. When I do lose track, its generally when I have to handle the scanner and move it too fast, its trial and error but once you learn how, it can be done with care with few issues. In my opinion it’s simply a matter of frame rate / rate of change, the slower you are the better it maintains lock - again this style of tripod is great for panning and moving the scanner head under complete control. Also I don’t scan too close, so I get more field of view and more randomness to lock onto. If I need detail I move in, but since it already has some points, it tracks a lot easier.

I don’t know what holds back the frame rate but if this could be increased the performance would also increase so it seems.

Lastly you can always insert a fake axis in the background or partially switch the clipping plane on then off. I used to use an engineers gizmo, which is two small engineers squares welded at 90 degrees placed on or near the object, that you you can very quickly align if you need to during the post processing.

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Could you tell a bit more about the tripod? I’m not sure what “gimbal” is (English is not my native language), and where I could find it in the picture you posted.
In the case you showed a picture of, would you slowly turn the wheel manually, or would you move the scanner/tripod?

Yea i just figured it may help for it to know where it’s at however i did mention to them a while back using the color image for additional tracking would be a great idea i mean look at photogrammetry it positions the cameras based on the parallax and would allow it to even better with some version of this
technically it would be possible but calculation intense to sample the color image ever second or so to and also using photogrammetry to add possible additional details back into the model… ?

In his picture, the gimbal is the small piece at the end of the horizontal arm that the POP is mounted on. It is a kind of ball in socket flexible joint. It has a small lock knob on its side that allows the position to be free to move or locked in place.

I would have thought processing is the issue for colour tracking - I did a fair bit of photogrammetry and once I had taken 106 odd photos it took a my computer a fair 10-15mins to process all the images (with no guarantee of success). Positional targets is just a tried and tested way - the more you work with them the easier it is to get and maintain successful tracks.

Yup a gumball is a ball and socket joint.
With the wheel I would stop the scan and re-position the tripod making when I hit ‘scan’ again it has a good set of dots immediately in the field of view to relocate on. The use the gimbal to ‘look around’ and repeat. The prob with the wheel is the spokes and the rim are so similar and it has nasty edges - slow movements are key.

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Are you sure? Looks like a normal ball joint to me, like the one that comes with the mini-tripod for the POP scanner.
I thought a “gimbal” was a kind of cardanic support that keeps the mounted device horizontal no matter how you move the tripod.

Ah, thank you, it makes perfect sense now.

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Original slang for the ball and socket type tripod heads was to call them a gimbal. Technically a gimbal was a type of video tripod head that permitted smooth motion while operating the camera. Depending on the design of the ball and socket head, it could be considered a gimbal and the name kind of stuck to all of them.

Over the last few years the hand held image stabilizer camera rigs have become more common and are what people expect as a gimbal as well.

So, you’re not wrong.

His picture didn’t include the image stabilizer version, but did include the ball and socket, which led me to call it out as what he meant. And he has confirmed that.

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