Autodesk Project Photofly

d12dozr

Project Photoflyis a technology preview of automatically converting photographs shot around an object or a scene into "Photo Scenes" using the power of cloud computing. The photographs can be shot with any standard digital camera...

Looks similar to Photosculpt, but free and more powerful. You upload a series of photos to the server, and the program creates a point cloud model that can be tweaked and exported to DWG, and used in Sketchup. Looks useful for Google Earth modeling among other things, of course

YouTube - Autodesk Labs: Convert Photos to 3D Models
[flash=480,385:3iugwgno]http://www.youtube.com/v/2Y13ZB43RE8&hl=en_US&fs=1[/flash:3iugwgno]

Rich O Brien

Wow, great find Marcus

solo

Using 'free' and 'Autodesk' together just sounds wrong!, what's the catch?

Rich O Brien

According to the blog it's free?

(labs.blogs.com)

But for how long?

jim smith

@solo said:

Using 'free' and 'Autodesk' together just sounds wrong!, what's the catch?

I think it is called - lure them in, set the hook while you test the beta. The bill comes later when they decide it is good enough to sell and the free software "Expires"

Sorry for being so cynical.

(By the way, it is pretty slick)

pbacot

Think of the other words that go with "fly"--"fishing" "catcher" "swatter"etc. You have to register with AutoDesk. But they are coming up with some great new software. I'll bite.

On another note has anyone noticed their other offshoot: Freestyle. It is a cheap 2d drawing program but the cover picture looks like a 3d model, looking suspiciously sketch-up-like.

solo

Yeah, freestyle is a great app for very fast landscape designs, use Google Earth and trace over home, slap in some landscape symbols and present it to client on the spot.

honoluludesktop

WOW!, The next step is to animate the model, and be able to see it from any direction as it changes.

pbacot

@solo said:

Yeah, freestyle is a great app for very fast landscape designs, use Google Earth and trace over home, slap in some landscape symbols and present it to client on the spot.

Pete, are you pulling my leg?

d12dozr

@solo said:

Using 'free' and 'Autodesk' together just sounds wrong!, what's the catch?

From the product page:

@unknownuser said:

The Photo Scene Editor executable will operate until August 1, 2011.

Hopefully its not outrageously spendy after that

jim smith

FYI --- photofly is now on version 2.0 and the "free" trial has been extended to 12-31-2012.

Never tried it last fall when it showed up on the forum, but I think I will give it a try and see how well it plays with sketchup.

I plan to model my old house as a test and will post the results.