Last Fall, Autodesk released ReCap Photo. It is only partially a new product and a companion product for ReCap and ReCap Pro. I say it is partially a new product because the technology has been around for over a year before the release of ReCap Photo. If you have been following Autodesk, ReCap, or reality capture, in general, you should have heard of or seen Project Memento. Project Memento was focused on mesh files while ReCap's photogrammetry workflow was focused on point clouds.
I really like this "semi-new" product. One of the biggest struggles for the casual ReCap user was how to go from the point cloud to something solid. Anyone using ReCap as part of a survey workflow, actually had tools inside of AutoCAD Civil 3D to turn point clouds into Civil 3D surfaces. However, there seemed to be a lack of tools for other applications. As I learn about ReCap Photo, I find that it is capable of functions that make my work easier. For example, I just found a way to use ReCap Photo and Fusion 360 to turn an STL file into a solid model.
If you have used the previous web-based Photo to 3D workflow, it is pretty similar. ReCap still uses the cloud to process the photos and make a 3D model. The biggest differences are that the project is created in a local application, and not a web site, and the output is now a mesh file instead of a point cloud. At first, I was not sure if I would like the mesh output because I was pretty comfortable with the point cloud output. I am growing to appreciate the mesh output and recognize that the mesh output is better suited for working toward a solid output.
I was a little nervous the first time I tried to run a ReCap Photo project because I was not able to set the scale of the model in the photos while uploading the photos. I discovered that scaling of object based projects is now done after the model is made. Which actually fits some advice Autodesk had for the previous workflow. Autodesk said that ReCap works best if it is allowed to figure how the photos fit together without having to worry about scaling. The old advice was to run projects once without control points, then run it again with them. Now that does not need to be done.
To help you make the transition into using ReCap Photo I have made two videos. The first video shows how to create an Object based project.
The second video shows some of ReCap Photo's tools for processing the mesh output.
