ARC 3D Webservice v2.2 Review
Overview
The Arc 3D Webservice is a convenient, powerful, and extremely accurate way to reconstruct real-world objects. It has different kinds of outputs for different user needs, from simple to complex. However, it is not licensed for commercial applications.
Ease of Use and Workflow:
Ease of use: Very Good to fair
Workflow simplicity: Excellent to fair (...if you're using Meshlab to do your own reconstruction)
Workflow simplicity: Excellent to fair (...if you're using Meshlab to do your own reconstruction)
How long does it take to get the results?
A reasonable amount of time. It will likely take several hours to get the email saying there are results. (More if you download the full results - see below.)
How good are the results?
Excellent, subjectively the best of the three.
The results appear extremely accurate. Again, material that is reflective or transparent makes reconstruction difficult, but I feel ARC3D does a better job than 123D Catch in reconstructing the geometry.
The results appear extremely accurate. Again, material that is reflective or transparent makes reconstruction difficult, but I feel ARC3D does a better job than 123D Catch in reconstructing the geometry.
The marbles came out only slightly better, but the red stone is quite good.
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Notice the little tin skulls - the geometry of these is quite detailed and impressive.
Click to view larger.
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A major difference in the appearance of the model is how the color texture is recreated. Whereas 123D Catch created a UV texture, this model uses a set of selected images to recreate a color texture. I'm not sure how this works, but mostly it does a good job. Except, as you see in the image on the right, where it tries to blend areas whose color changed from image to image (because of reflectivity).
Look carefully at the nose - see the strange color variations down the left-hand ridge?
Before we get too far, it's important to know that ARC3D gives three different outputs to the user: the "raw" data (for lack of a better term) that can be put into Meshlab by the user for ultimate control and reconstruction of the object; a high-poly (~250k triangles) .OBJ file , and a lower-poly file that opens directly in a web-browser. For more details, see below.
How does it work?
Not as slick as 123D Catch, ARC 3D has a straight-forward user interface.
The image above is what you see when you first start the program. You can go to File > Open Images and browse to the folder you want, hit Ctrl+O, or just press the first blue button, below file.
It loads the images.
Images show on the left. Time to upload them.
After it thinks about things for a little while, it takes a minute or two to load the mesh model. The view is simple, but the controls are kind of annoying - I always miss using the middle mouse button to orbit around the object (as in Blender).
Notice it gave me more than just the mask. Mostly that's easy to remove.
Notice it gave me more than just the mask. Mostly that's easy to remove.
Another angle. The parts that aren't attached to the mask are easy to delete. It's going to be more difficult to remove the things that are attached to the mask that shouldn't be there.
When you do select parts of the mesh (using those two left-most buttons on the tool bar at top), and then press delete, you get this warning. Mesh resolution is where you can change how many faces (triangles) there are. To do this, use the blue cube button, second from the right, and it recomputes all the images. you can save the model you have, before that, though.
Here's the mesh with all those extraneous islands deleted.
Export to Blender
Easy. You can save the file as a .OBJ and import that directly into Blender.
Now we want to export to a format that Blender can use. Don't use the default .dwg. You should use .obj, which is fine. We're only interested in the mesh, anyway, not the texture, though .OBJ brings that, too. It would be nice if 123D catch supported collada, but not really a sticking point.
What are the Terms of Service? (EULA)
I am not a lawyer, and this review is not meant as legal advice.The EULA is, for the most part, a pretty standard close-source document - all that stuff you don't read when you install programs, free or otherwise. You should be reading these things....
The do start section 3. paragraph a), by confirming that you, the creator are the owner of your creations.
In 3. b) i) and ii), the part about sharing you content on their site, well: you're publicly sharing your creation. I think we all can assume you're not all that concerned about keeping control over it. Read this section, before you share your models.
In 3. c) (even though they have a typo that calls it b) again) there is the option for "Keeping your content non-public". You can opt out of sharing, that's good. However, 3 c) ii) says:
The do start section 3. paragraph a), by confirming that you, the creator are the owner of your creations.
In 3. b) i) and ii), the part about sharing you content on their site, well: you're publicly sharing your creation. I think we all can assume you're not all that concerned about keeping control over it. Read this section, before you share your models.
In 3. c) (even though they have a typo that calls it b) again) there is the option for "Keeping your content non-public". You can opt out of sharing, that's good. However, 3 c) ii) says:
(ii) you automatically grant to us and our sub-licensees [...] a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, paid-up, worldwide, sublicensable [...] license to have Access to, store, display, reproduce, modify, use, disclose, distribute and transmit such Your Content for purposes of providing, maintaining, repairing, protecting, organizing and/or otherwise administering or providing to you products, services and/or features on the Service [...] to comply with applicable laws/regulations/legal proceedings, in the ordinary course of our (or our designated third parties’) providing, improving and/or modifying the Service or any of products and/or services, including extracting, compiling, aggregating, synthesizing, using, and otherwise analyzing all or any portion of Your Content and information, and to disclose such Content and information and the results of any such analysis in aggregated form or any other form that does not specifically identify you unless emailed to or Accessed by your authorized designees or otherwise permitted by these Terms. LINK
I've been over this several times, and I think this is just to show they can do what they need to do with your data to continue to provide the service, but it still makes me a bit nervous.
