Abstract
3D reconstruction of geo-objects from their digital images is a time-efficient and convenient way of studying the structural features of the object being modelled. This paper presents a 3D reconstruction methodology which can be used to generate photo-realistic 3D watertight surface of different irregular shaped objects, from digital image sequences of the objects. The 3D reconstruction approach described here is robust, simplistic and can be readily used in reconstructing watertight 3D surface of any object from its digital image sequence. Here, digital images of different objects are used to build sparse, followed by dense 3D point clouds of the objects. These image-obtained point clouds are then used for generation of photo-realistic 3D surfaces, using different surface reconstruction algorithms such as Poisson reconstruction and Ball-pivoting algorithm. Different control parameters of these algorithms are identified, which affect the quality and computation time of the reconstructed 3D surface. The effects of these control parameters in generation of 3D surface from point clouds of different density are studied. It is shown that the reconstructed surface quality of Poisson reconstruction depends on Samples per node (SN) significantly, greater SN values resulting in better quality surfaces. Also, the quality of the 3D surface generated using Ball-Pivoting algorithm is found to be highly depend upon Clustering radius and Angle threshold values. The results obtained from this study give the readers of the article a valuable insight into the effects of different control parameters on determining the reconstructed surface quality.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-016-2425-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Three-dimensional modeling of geo-objectsplays an important role in various fields of engineering, like rock mechanics, geology, civil and mining
Some of the existing methods for 3D modeling of geo-objects include models generated from laser scanner, CAD based 3D modeling of underground tunnels and traditional surveying
Several point clouds were generated from digital image sequences of different geo-scenes and objects, for performance analysis of the 3D reconstruction algorithms
Summary
Three-dimensional modeling of geo-objects (like rock mass, underground tunnel, etc.)plays an important role in various fields of engineering, like rock mechanics, geology, civil and mining. Some of the existing methods for 3D modeling of geo-objects include models generated from laser scanner, CAD based 3D modeling of underground tunnels and traditional surveying. Laser-scanner based 3D reconstruction of rock-face is fast and accurate; it gives photo-realistic textured 3D models of a scene or object. As laser scanners are very expensive, they are not widely used to study the geo-mechanical characteristics of rocks, underground tunnels, etc. These problems in the existing 3D modelling techniques have inspired researchers in using photogrammetry to create photo-realistic 3D objects from digital images of different scenes. 3D reconstruction using digital images can be used for mapping and photo-realistic modelling of outdoor geo-objects like rock mass. As digital cameras and computers are pretty common in households and industries these days, the cost of image-based reconstruction process is negligible
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