Meshroom 2019.1 is out now
The developers of Meshroom have released Meshroom 2019.1, the first major update to the open-source photogrammetry software since its original release.
The update improves the speed and quality of mesh generation, adds support for source images captured using projected light patterns, and removes the need for a Nvidia GPU.
Based on a powerful open-source photogrammetry framework
First officially released last year, Meshroom is a GUI for AliceVision, the well-regarded open-source photogrammetry framework created by leading French research institutions and VFX facilities.
The framework generates textured 3D meshes from sets of photographs of real-world objects, exporting the geometry in OBJ format.
Intermediate point cloud data can be exported in Alembic format, and depth maps as EXR files.
Improvements to meshing include a workaround for non-Nvidia GPUs
Meshroom 2019.1 introduces a “better, faster and configurable” estimation of the space to be reconstructed based on the intermediate point cloud.
The new algorithm favours high-density areas in the cloud and removed badly defined ones.
The update also makes it possible to perform meshing on systems with non-Nvidia graphics cards, albeit via the lower-quality Draft Meshing option.
The standard method, which involves generating depth maps, is CUDA-based, and requires a Nvidia GPU.
Support for projected light patterns, better matching of real-world cameras
Meshroom 2019.1 also makes it possible to reconstruct meshes from images captured using projected light patterns, using a separate set of images as textures.
Other changes include the option to load and compare multiple 3D assets inside Meshroom’s 3D viewer.
In addition, the sensor database the software uses has been expanded to improve matching of real-world camera models. It is also now possible to display camera intrinsic information extracted from metadata.
Availability and system requirements
AliceVision and Meshroom are available free under the MPL2 licence.
Compiled binaries of Meshroom are available for 64-bit Windows and Linux. While there is no official macOS version of the software, you can find instructions for compiling from source here.
Read a full list of new features in Meshroom 2019.1 (Includes download links)