I’ve been testing out instant-ngp recently, it’s an open-source software from Nvidia that generates neural radiance fields. That’s a 3D representation of an object that is fundamentally different from the points or verticies and faces we may be used to. Rather than representing an object through 3D coordinates, connections between them, and colours (i.e. vertices... Continue Reading →
News/Blog
[Academic Tech] Data Backup! Western Digital My Cloud Ex 2 Ultra Network Attached Storage review
Backing up is super important, we all know this, but we're not all great at it, and almost everyone I know has had an incident, at some point, where important data has been lost. It's not just having duplicates of things that is the issue either - just storing and accessing the kinds of big... Continue Reading →
[Academic Tech] Sony a6400 ‘review’
A few months back I finally upgraded from my trusty Sony Nex-6 to the newer Sony a6400. I've only just got around to having the time to write a review. This 'review' will very much be a ramble about my feelings using the camera, not a technical, specialist review. If you want one of those,... Continue Reading →
[Photogrammetry Testing] COLMAP 3.7 and OpenMVS v2.0 [now with CUDA]
I saw recently that COLMAP had received an update to 3.7 in late Jan '22 (I'd previously tested 3.6 a year or more ago), though after a quick, unscientific trial, I didn't notice any particular changes to UI, workflow, speed, or quality of final model, so I didn't think it was worth a blog post.... Continue Reading →
[Photogrammetry testing] Beholder Vision (cloud based)
I was contacted just before Christmas by Alan Broun from Beholder Vision, asking me to give it a twirl and write about my thoughts. Beholder Vision, https://beholder.vision/, s a cloud-based photogrammetry solution. That means everything runs in the cloud, rather than on your local hardware. I tend to avoid the cloud-based solutions, because I live... Continue Reading →
[Academic Tech] Back to the Surface Pro X
One year ago, on Christmas eve 2020, I posted about the Surface Pro X. I was very happy with it, except for one thing - the size. I ended up replacing the Pro X with the Surface Go 2 just a month or so later. My reasoning was that it was about as powerful as... Continue Reading →
[Academic Tech] Logitech Craft Wireless Keyboard
Much as the popular view is that palaeontologists spend their days out in the dusty desert digging up fossils, the fact is most of us spend more time at a computer than anything else, and that goes doubly so when your research revolves around computer simulations. As such, a keyboard is probably one of the... Continue Reading →
[Academic Tech] Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 _basic_ review, and thoughts on what I’m looking for in a phone.
Yeah, 'Academic' here is more of a stretch than usual... Having been locked down/working from home for however long it's been (12 months? 18 months? a billion years?], and having been using the same computer, tablet, and phone during this time, I've been getting antsy for a new device, particularly one that either fills a... Continue Reading →
Colour matching textures of two models with Photoshop.
Using "color match" in photoshop to make two photogrammetric models made under different lighting conditions, more consistent.
Meshroom CL – The best free photogrammetry software now works without Nvidia
A little while ago I wrote about COLMAP-CL, a fork of the original project re-written so as to remove the reliance on CUDA, and therefore Nvidia GPUs. Now, from the same source, OpenPhotogrammetry on Github, comes Meshroom-CL. It's still in pre-release, at version 0.7, but I gave it a run through on my work iMac... Continue Reading →