How to generate wireframe from point clouds on top of observed objects - mesh

Iam trying to generate wireframe on top of objects after generating the point clouds. How can i get wireframes similar to the ones generated in the image?
I am able to run ORB SLAM2 and generate point clouds and save them. Iam even able to generate wireframe from .pcd files from the point cloud library.
However Iam looking for results such as the ones shown in this picture.
How can i approach towards this?
The target wireframe image

ORB-SLAM 2 is at its heart just a sparse feature-based SLAM. What you want can't be achieved with just that library, and furthermore, the image you give as an example is reprojecting a CDI mesh into the image. The only way you can get results like this is by having a 3D mesh of the object before you run your SLAM, and localise said mesh in the scene (there is a vast litterature on model-based SLAM, which I think is the best place for you to look into). The main idea in that case would be to match elements from the 3d mesh to elements in the image (whethere those are keypoints or some form of features), and use them either in your cost function or in some PnP-like scheme.

Related

GODOT: What is an efficient calculation for the AABB of a simple 3D model from a camera's view

I am attempting to come up with a quick and efficient means of translating a 3d mesh into a projected AABB. In the end, I would like to accomplish something similar to figure 1 wherein only the area of the screen covered by the cube is located inside the bounding box highlighted in red. ((if it is at all possible, getting the area as small as possible, highlighted in blue, would increase efficiency down the road.))
Figure 1. https://i.imgur.com/pd0E20C.png
Currently, I have tried:
Calculating the point position on the screen using camera.unproject_position(). this failed largely due to my inability to wrap my head around the pixel positions trending towards infinity. I understand it has something to do with Tan, but frankly, it is too late for my brain to function anymore.
Getting the area of collision between the view frustum and the AABB of the mesh instance. This method seems convoluted, and to get it in a usable format I would need to project the result into 2d coordinates again.
Using the MeshInstance VisualInstance to create a texture wherein a pixel is white if it contains the mesh instance, and black otherwise. Visual instances in general just baffle me, and I did not think it would be efficient to have another viewport just to output this texture.
What I am looking for:
An output that can be passed to a shader informing where to complete certain calculations. Right now this is set up to use a bounding box, but it could easily be rewritten to also use a texture. It also could be rewritten to use polygons, but I am trying to keep calculations to a minimum in the shader.
Certain solutions I have tried before have worked, slightly, but this must be robust. The camera interfacing with the 3d object will be able to move completely around and through it, meaning at times the view will be completely surrounded by the 3d model with points both in front, and behind.
Thank you for any help you can provide.
I will try my best to update this post with information if needed.

How to detect an image between shapes from camera

I've been searching around the web about how to do this and I know that it needs to be done with OpenCV. The problem is that all the tutorials and examples that I find are for separated shapes detection or template matching.
What I need is a way to detect the contents between 3 circles (which can be a photo or something else). From what I searched, its not to difficult to find the circles with the camera using contours but, how do I extract what is between them? The circles work like a pattern on the image to grab what is "inside the pattern".
Do I need to use the contours of each circle and measure the distance between them to grab my contents? If so, what if the image is a bit rotated/distorted on the camera?
I'm using Xamarin.iOS for this but from what I already saw, I believe I need to go native for this and any Objective C example is welcome too.
EDIT
Imagining that the image captured by the camera is this:
What I want is to match the 3 circles and get the following part of the image as result:
Since the images come from the camera, they can be rotated or scaled up/down.
The warpAffine function will let you map the desired area of the source image to a destination image, performing cropping, rotation and scaling in a single go.
Talking about rotation and scaling seem to indicate that you want to extract a rectangle of a given aspect ratio, hence perform a similarity transform. To define such a transform, three points are too much, two suffice. The construction of the affine matrix is a little tricky.

How can a 3D game render an object without having a sprite for every single angle?

When learning to program simple 2D games, each object would have a sprite sheet with little pictures of how a player would look in every frame/animation. 3D models don't seem to work this way or we would need one image for every possible view of the object!
For example, a rotating cube would need a lot images depicting how it would look on every single side. So my question is, how are 3D model "images" represented and rendered by the engine when viewed from arbitrary perspectives?
Multiple methods
There is a number of methods for rendering and storing 3D graphics and models. There are even different methods for rendering 2D graphics! In addition to 2D bitmaps, you also have SVG. SVG uses numbers to define points in an image. These points make shapes. The points can also define curves. This allows you to make images without the need for pixels. The result can be smaller file sizes, in addition to the ability to transform the image (scale and rotate) without causing distortion. Most 3D graphics use a similar technique, except in 3D. What these methods have in common, however, is that they all ultimately render the data to a 2D grid of pixels.
Projection
The most common method for rendering 3D models is projection. All of the shapes to be rendered are broken down into triangles before rendering. Why triangles? Because triangles are guaranteed to be coplanar. That saves a lot of work for the renderer since it doesn't have to worry about "coloring outside of the lines". One drawback to this is that most 3D graphics projection technologies don't support perfect spheres or other round surfaces. You have to use approximations and other tricks to make round surfaces (although there are some renderers which support round surfaces). The next step is to convert or project all of the 3D points into 2D points on the screen (as seen below).
From there, you essentially "color in" the triangles to make everything look solid. While this is pretty fast, another downside is that you can't really have things like reflections and refractions. Anytime you see a refractive or reflective surface in a game, they are only using trickery to make it look like a reflective or refractive material. The same goes for lighting and shading.
Here is an example of special coloring being used to make a sphere approximation look smooth. Notice that you can still see straight lines around the smoothed version:
Ray tracing
You also can render polygons using ray tracing. With this method, you basically trace the paths that the light takes to reach the camera. This allows you to make realistic reflections and refractions. However, I won't go into detail since it is too slow to realistically use in games currently. It is mainly used for 3D animations (like what Pixar makes). Simple scenes with low quality settings can be ray traced pretty quickly. But with complicated, realistic scenes, rendering can take several hours for a single frame (as is the case with Pixar movies). However, it does produce ultra realistic images:
Ray casting
Ray casting is not to be confused with the above-mentioned ray tracing. Ray casting does not trace the light paths. That means that you only have flat surfaces; not reflective. It also does not produce realistic light. However, this can be done relatively quickly, since in most cases you don't even need to cast a ray for every pixel. This is the method that was used for early games such as Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. In early games, ray casting was used for the maps, and the characters and other items were rendered using 2D sprites that were always facing the camera. The sprites were drawn from a few different angles to make them look 3D. Here is an image of Wolfenstein 3D:
Castle Wolfenstein with JavaScript and HTML5 Canvas: Image by Martin Kliehm
Storing the data
3D data can be stored using multiple methods. It is not necessarily dependent on the rendering method that is used. The stored data doesn't mean anything by itself, so you have to render it using one of the methods that have already been mentioned.
Polygons
This is similar to SVG. It is also the most common method for storing model data. You define the geometry using 3D points. These points can have other properties, such as texture data (in the form of UV mapping), color data, and whatever else you might want.
The data can be stored using a number of file formats. A common file format that is used is COLLADA, which is an XML file that stores the 3D data. There are a lot of other formats though. Fundamentally, however, all file formats are still storing the 3D data.
Here is an example of a polygon model:
Voxels
This method is pretty simple. You can think of voxel models like bitmaps, except they are a bunch of bitmaps layered together to make 3D bitmaps. So you have a 3D grid of pixels. One way of rendering voxels is converting the voxel points to 3D cubes. Note that voxels do not have to be rendered as cubes, however. Like pixels, they are only points that may have color data which can be interpreted in different ways. I won't go into much detail since this isn't too common and you generally render the voxels with polygon methods (like when you render them as cubes. Here is an example of a voxel model:
Image by Wikipedia user Vossman
In the 2D world with sprite sheets, you are drawing one of the sprites depending on the state of the actor (visual representation of your object). In the 3D world you are rendering a model for your actor that is a series of polygons with a texture mapped to it. There are standardized model files (I am mostly familiar with Autodesk 3DS Max), in which the model and the assigned textures can be packaged together (a .3DS or .MAX file), providing everything your graphics library needs to render the object and its textures.
In a nutshell, you don't use images for each view of a 3D object, you have a model with a texture rendered on it, creating a dynamic view as it is rendered by the graphics library.

3D Transformations on a Quartz2D path — Drawing Application

I'm in the planning stage of writing a Cocoa drawing application (for Mac, not iOS), and I'm trying to discern whether one of my features is technically possible via any of the drawing frameworks. Any help or relevant information would be greatly appreciated.
The idea is to apply a 3D transformation to an object drawn with Quartz2D. I've considered capturing the relevant portion of the canvas View (where objects are drawn) as an image and sending it to Core Animation, but that doesn't seem like the best option. Since this is a drawing application, it's less about 3D animation than it is about the transformed shape. This solution is also less than ideal because I assume that if the 2D object were a vector path rather a bitmap image, I would have to rasterize it to apply such a transformation. The ideal implementation would enable the user to dynamically rotate a flat object in 3 dimensions until she found a suitable orientation, lock in this transformation, and still be able to manually adjust the path's vector points.
Is this feasible? Would it require working directly with OpenGL? Help of any kind is most welcome.
Thank you!
Seems to me that anything you'd do with a 3D transform, you should be able to do with multiple affine transforms. See UIBezierPath's -applyTransform method.

Is it possible to animate markers in ArcMap?

I'm completely new to ArcGIS and ArcMap, but someone suggested this program to me for a project I'm working on.
I would like to animate individual entities on a map, and was wondering if it is possible to do so in ArcMap. I asked this earlier here and a member directed me to a tutorial on animating in ArcGIS. The animation in the guide was over a map spread (ie. each pixel on the map displays, say, a different color to indicate population data in the area). However I realized that if I zoom in a lot, eventually the image will degenerate into pixels, which is why I need an actual object to mark a certain point. I checked some online tutorials and it seems like we can place markers on the map. Can someone tell me if it is possible to animate these markers (for example via a for-loop)? And if so, could you point me in a direction where to start?
Thanks in advance!
You can animate layers in ArcMap is the short answer. Its not as simple as using the timeline feature in Google Earth for example though. But then ArcMap is much more than just a visualization tool.
This help page on the ESRI web help looks like a good place to start.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by the image degenerates into pixels. Are you saying that the markers were single points in the layer. Unlike Google Earth you are not confined to simply plotting points on the map. You can draw completely arbitrary shapes in ArcMap, which can be defined to cover actual areas of the map, so when you zoom-in the shape gets larger.
The way you need to load data into ArcMap to produce an animation isn't too simple. There might be other ways to do this, but the way I know of is to generate a NetCDF file. This file contains a 3D matrix of layer data, where each layer is separated through time. Because you generate a matrix, you are effectively placing a raster image over the map. Thus if you want to cover a large area, each matrix becomes large, and you multiply that by the number of time slices you wish to animate over.
Once you have a NetCDF file with your data in however, getting ArcMap to animate it and produce say a .avi file is pretty simple.
You could try just loading some of the example NetCDF datasets into ArcMap to see how/if they will work to get you started.
Hope that helps.
The upcoming v10 will have better time-aware capabilities, which will allow for animation.