www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJLwPtEwmY&feature=player_embedded
I think we can all agree that point cloud animations can really create excitement and interest, especially if done well. The trick is knowing how to do that without going over the client’s budget.
Well according to Hovig Devejian from Precision Civil Engineering it’s actually not that difficult. He provided a wealth of information about free software, the key settings, and how to significantly reduce file sizes during his presentation at last week’s Leica UC. As he clearly demonstrated knowing these tricks can produce dramatically better and smaller animations.
The 2 free software products that he recommends are Windows Media Video VCM 9 Encoder and Virtualdub. Used in conjunction with Cyclone, Hovig went through the details of his workflow and the settings that he prefers. I can share his presentation with you (35 MB) if you would like to see the details, or you can contact Hovig at hdevejian@precisioneng.net.
His presentation will also be available soon from Leica.
Very Cool! I missed the conference but enjoyed all the feedback from those that went and shared their experiences via New Media: Twitter, Linked-in, Blogs, and such. I like the video and have downloaded the software to give it a try. I have produced quite a few videos about mobile lidar since we acquired our LYNX. The difficulty always seems to be lag time in the rendering of the point cloud data. With Cam Studio you can edit out the lag but it’s a little tedious. Check out my videos on themobilemapper.blogspot.com or type eandelin into you-tube’s search engine.
The animation shown is that produced by one of our customers in Turkey who scans with a Riegl and Pointools View Pro.
I think a simple movie can be a powerful way to approach new clients and start a discussion (or often education) on laser scanning in a non-technical way.
3D Laser Mapping in the UK managed to write some software to convert trajectory information out of their mobile scanner to a camera path which they then used to render a perfect movie along the road – this was one of the more successful animations of mobile scan data I’ve seen, also Teccon in Belgium have done some good animation work with the output from an Optech Lynx.