Draping Imagery on Interpolated Surface

[armstrong_geology]

It's me again,

I noticed a "textured mesh" in a tutorial, and was wondering;
a) Can textured meshes be produced in CC, or was it likely imported?
b) If I wanted to drape imagery (from the photo survey that produced the point cloud) onto the interpolated surface, could it be done? I have seen many examples of doing this with aerial photos by georeferencing GCPs in the photo and dropping it onto the z values of a DEM for example. BUT, what if my photos are not aerial? Is there a way to georeference such a photo and have it drape onto the surface from the direction the photo was taken, rather than fall down onto the surface from the georeferenced position and likely be distorted?

I hope that makes sense,
GRATITUDE!

[daniel]

Then I guess it was imported as is because there's no such tool in CloudCompare.

As you suggested, Snavely's Bundler tool can generate a point cloud from (aerial) photographs and then CC is able to load both the calibrated photographs and the resulting point cloud (and optionally generate a colored mesh from such a dataset). However I believe that the Bundler tool (and equivalent SFM - shape from motion - tools such as VisualSFM) can work pretty well with standard "ground based" photos.

[armstrong_geology]

Hi Daniel,

Could you recommend a tutorial or resource that could help me with this task?
Thanks very much!

Lindsay

[armstrong_geology]

Also,

I created my point clouds from Microsoft's Photosynth (bundler you are referring to I believe). I have since manipulated the clouds here in CC, because it works great!
Are you suggesting that cloud compare can be provided the photos used to produce these clouds, and will be able to make a meshed surface?

Thanks as always!
Lindsay

[daniel]

Nope I was referring to Noah Snavely's Bundler: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~snavely/bundler

And with AirPhotoSE you can create a colored point cloud (you can do it also with VisualSFM) and eventually produce a colored mesh with CC (not a textured one). Here is the dedicated tutorial on AirPhotoSE website:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/~al001/airphoto ... hs1500.htm