Welcome to a iModeller 3D Professional Walkthrough: "The Deer"

Hi there,

and thanks for your interest in iModeller 3D! This walkthrough will show you how easy it is to generate a high quality VRML model from a series of simple object images. The ZIP file you just downloaded contains all necessary image files plus a high quality VRML model which was generated with iModeller 3D Professional Edition (no retouching! ;-)). All you need is the iModeller 3D Professional Edition Demo, and you are ready to go!

If you have any question regarding this Walk Through or iModeller 3D, please send us an email to support@imodeller.com.

Have fun!

The iModeller 3D Support Team

1. Loading the object images.

   First of all, you need to load the object images. Start iModeller 3D, choose "Load Images" from the "File" menu and browse to the folder where you saved the images you just unpacked. Select all images ("rehbock001.tif" through "rehbock013.tif") and hit OK.

   
   

2. Define a Group Name.

   iModeller 3D Professional Edition now asks you to add the selected images to an image group. Enter any desired group name (e.g. "deer") and hit OK.

   
   

3. Calibrate the images

   The images are loaded into the iModeller 3D Professional Edition work space. Let the fun begin by switching to the "Calibrate" mode ("Calibrate" index in the Work View or "Calibrate" from the "Windows" menu). iModeller 3D Professional automatically detects the pattern in every single image. With this information, all necessary camera parameters are automatically reconstructed.

   
   

4. Adding Manual Marker Points

   The auto calibration data is used to reconstruct e.g. position and focal length of the camera you took the images with. You can increase the accuracy of this reconstruction by setting additional manual marker points. This way, you will directly increase your 3D results!

   Hit the "Marker Point Mode" icon in the "Calibration" Toolbar. iModeller 3D Professional Edition now switches to the "Marker Point" mode.

   
   

   Zoom in on the deer's horns in the first image. (Use your wheel mouse for that. iModeller 3D features a ZoomToPoint functionality which comes very handy - you zoom in the direction of your mouse pointer.) Click one of the horns' ends with the mouse button

   
   

   The Marker Point Properties Dialogue opens. Here you can enter a name for the marker point you just set: use e.g. "Horn 1" and check the "SmartClick" checkbox underneath the line edit. Now close the dialogue with "OK".

   
   

   The SmartClick functionality makes it easier to set marker points without the hassle of having to enter the whole name of the marker point over and over again. Also, SmartClick also numbers the marker points you set - thus, the next marker point you set in the image will get the name "Horn 2" automatically. Please go ahead and label the other three ends of the horn with "Horn 2" and "Horn 3". Switch to the next image and identify all three marker points here as well. Proceed until you identified them in every of the images. Make sure that you set the marker points as exactly as possible. Also, it is not a big deal if one of the locations is invisible in one of the images - simply leave that one out and proceed to the next one.

   
   

5. Calibrating the Marker Points

   Once you are done setting the marker points, hit the "Calibrate Marker Points" icon in the "Marker Points" Tool Bar. iModeller 3D Professional Edition now uses the set marker points to improve the images' calibration data. This is done automatically and only takes a second or two.

   
   

   Once this marker point calibration is finished, you can check the results: open the Marker Point Properties dialogue by a click on the "Marker Point Properties" Icon in the "Marker Point" tool bar.

   The Dialogue opens and now features the average variation of each set marker point. You can use this information for calibration improvement: identify outliers and adjust their position. If you have e.g. a marker point which features a variation of e.g. 10 pixel, switch to the indicated image and change this marker point's position. This is done by holding the CTRL key and dragging the point to its new location. Once you cange one or more marker point positions, you have to calibrate the marker points again in order to apply the changes.

   
   

6. Generating a first 3D Model

   Ready for a first 3D impression? Hit the "3D" index or select "3D" from the "Windows" menu to switch to the "3D" mode. A 3D model is generated and displayed in the work view.

   Quite nice already, but this 3D deer needs some further care. There are two major minusses here:

   • The Horns' Geometry. The horns' geometry is not detailed enough and looks rather rough. We need more detail there, but that is easily done - you will see.

     
     

   • The Rear Texture. The rear texture features the rack the deer's head is mounted on. Does not look too god, but we will fix that in a second as well.

     
     

7. Improving the 3D Geometry

   Switch back to the mask mode and select the "Details" mask from the "Edit" menu. Now, select image "rehbock005.tif" and roughly paint the horns of the deer with the "Details" mask. Do the same with the horns in image "rehbock012.tif". The "Details" mask will increase the 3D geometry resolution everywhere it is applied. Thus, the automatic reconstruction will use more polygons for the horns next time.
   

   Now we have to adjust the "3D" settings of iModeller 3D Professional Edition to receive a higher overall detail. Open the "Preferences" dialogue ("Edit" menu). On the "3D Settings" tab, enter a "Voxel resolution" value of "150" and a "Voxel Smoothing" value of "16". A higher resoluted an less smoothed model will be reconstructed next time. Just because we got the dialogue open, use this opportunity to adjust the texture resolution to 1024 "Width" and 1024 "Height" - this defines the texture resolution. Close the dialogue with "OK".

   
   

8. Improving the Texture

   Select the "Texture On" mask from the "Edit" menu and switch to image "rehbock006.tif".

   The "Texture On" mask forces iModeller 3D to use the indicated image parts for texture reconstruction. If you paint the deer's rear in this image with the "Texture On" mask, the texture will feature only this image's information. So please do that - will look way nicer!
   

   While we are still in the "Texture On" mode, you might want to paint the eyes of the deer with this mask as well. It always improves overall impression of faces and the like if characteristic parts are textured from one image instead of being interpolated from all - it looks more realistic. So please switch to the images "rehbock001.tiff" and "rehbock010.tif" and paint the deer's eyes.
   

9. Generating a Nice Model

   Now activate the "3D" mode again. The 3D model is generated quickly, and boy, what a nice result!

   Raise the number of polygons to "1500" using the provided resolution slider underneath the 3D model in the work view. Display the 3D model's wireframe by selecting "Wireframe" from the "View" menu. You will see that the resolution of the horns is higher that on the rest of the model. This is due to the "Details" mask.
   

   Rotate the 3D model to see the deer's rear. See the improved texture? This is due to the "Texture On" mask usage.
   

10. Exporting a VRML File

    YOu may now export this 3D model to a number of 3D formats (3DS, DXF, C4D, OBJ, VRML, STL, UZR, QuickTIme and Macromedia Flash). We want to be using the VRML export here. Select "Export" from the "File" menu, then "VRML". This will not work in the Demo of iModeller 3D Professional Edition, only in the full version! We included a exported VRML of this 3D model for you, though, so you can check the quality yourself.

    After you entered your desired file name and location, the "Export" dialogue opens. When exporting to VRML, there are three different tabs available:

    • The Cameras Tab. This tab controls the export of the camera positions reconstructed with iModeller 3D Professional Edition. Comes handy when working with a 3D package like e.g. Cinema 4D or 3D Studio Max. That is why we check the "Export Cameras" checkbox.
      

    • The Material Tab. This tab controls the 3D material settings. We want high texture quality, thus we raise the texture quality to "100" using the provided slider.
      

    • The Copyright Tab. You never know who might screw with your work, so a way to label your work as yours might come handy. Simply add your copyright text here.

      
      

    Once you are done, hit "OK". The file is written to disk, and you can open it with your favourite 3D application for further rendering and/or animation, or whatever you want to do.

    Congratulations! You are done creating a high quality 3D model in a blink!

That was easy, wasn't it? Please check the exported 3D model yourself, you will find it in the "VRML" folder in the ZIP file you downloaded.
No tricks.
No retouching
Just iModeller 3D.