Some serious updates to our reality computing tools have been released in the last few days… here’s a quick round-up with links you can use to go and find out more.
ReCap 2.2
Each member of the ReCap portfolio – ReCap, ReCap 360 and ReCap Ultimate – has significant new features in this release. Full details are available here.
To summarize just a few, there are new features focused on noise clean-up of point clouds as well as optimizing them for editing performance and project size, and a number of improvements relating to creation of presentation assets such as walkthroughs, flythroughs and videos. Work has also been done to improve support for the E57 file format, both on import and export.
One major area of focus relates to UAV (drone) support. It’s now much easier to combine terrestrial laser scan data with UAV-captured aerial photography. And to encourage people to give it a try, we’ve unveiled a new “Fly Promo”: this allows subscribers of the single year ReCap 360 or Ultimate subscription to get 400 cloud credits instead of the usual 50. (The offer ends on December 22, 2015, and is limited to the first 2,000 purchases.)
Memento
One of the important enhancements in this release of Memento relates to 3D printing support. Most 3D printing software has trouble dealing with the massive meshes Memento creates, which means that irrespective of the capabilities of the 3D printer, itself, its software requires dumbed-down content. This version of Memento can slice high-resolution meshes, sending the output directly to the 3D printer, effectively bypassing the printer software and overcoming the resolution problem. Right now it works with Autodesk’s Ember printer – of course – but the work is really in anticipation of the eventual availability of full-colour, native-resolution 3D printers.
Here’s a summary of the additional capabilities that have been delivered in this release:
- New 3D print environment for printing on Autodesk Ember at high resolution (down to 10 microns per layer) with hollow and lattice-fill functions
- New coordinate points feature to set scale/coordinate system (for interoperability with ReCap and easier comparison between two states of a model)
- New boundary/edge-loop selection tool for smart one-click selection of holes or edges
- Smart crop and texture option re-enabled in the Advanced tools of the “Create from 3D” panel
- Improved extrude & fill tool
- Widgets for most mesh operations are now easier to use
- Preview for turntable video export for predictable and controllable outcomes
- Split the screen into 2 or 4 viewports
- New fast texture re-baking for large models and with new “max resolution" option. Now supports export of normal maps for OBJ export
- New tool panel options for changing color scheme of the UI for those who work in dark schemes and few more options
- Brush selection tool is snappier
- New RCM file format for optimized mesh operations and to support soon-to-come multiple mesh handling capability
One that’s of particular interest, in my opinion, is the ability to re-bake textures for large models and maintain the quality even when you reduce the polygon count. This is going to be really interesting for VR and AR workflows, especially when working with mobile or web-based AR/VR.
Oh, and don’t forget to check out the Memento gallery. It’s chock-full of impressive projects that have been created and shared using Memento.
