Capture Requirements

Please ensure you are familiar with the capture requirements, following these requirements will improve results considerably.

For your Capture System to be compatible with Marso, it must:

• Capture images in RAW format, with manual exposure.

• Capture with the flash enabled, and little to no ambient light.

• Capture against a dark background, ideally black.

If you are unsure whether your system will work with Marso, follow the recommendations below, or contact [e-mail] to discuss the details of your system.

---

• Camera

• Lens

• Light(s)

• Capture Scene

  1. Ambient Lighting

  2. Background

  3. Markers

• Framing

• Coverage

• Files

Camera

Marso has been designed and developed with professional & prosumer cameras in mind, such as DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, and some smartphone cameras.

If you are capturing with multiple cameras, they must all be the same model. Marso can only work with one camera model for each capture.

Key Points

• Save images in a Raw file format. Supported RAW formats can be found here.

• Set manual exposure (shutter speed / ISO / Aperture).

• Disable any image stabilization, either on the lens, camera or both.

• A high aperture number will offer better results, by keeping more of the object in focus.

If shooting with an iPhone/iPad, the Halide Mark II - Pro Camera app is recommended to shoot in RAW

---

Lens

We suggest use a lens around 28mm (wide). Marso requires the whole object be kept in frame, see here.

Ultra-wide and telephoto lenses are not recommended, due to the increased distortion making a photogrammetry solve more difficult.

---

Lights

Usually the best option for lighting is the on-board flash, either on your DSLR camera or smartphone. If you don’t have an on-board flash, or wish to use an existing light setup, see here.

---

Capture Scene

Ambient Lighting

Ideally the scene would have no ambient light at all. Failing this, the flash must be powerful enough to overpower any ambient light. See below for perfect, okay and bad ambient lighting examples.

Perfect Lighting

Flash Off

Flash On

Okay Lighting

Flash Off

Flash On

Bad Lighting

Flash Off

Flash On

Background

In addition to reducing the ambient lighting, it is also important to reduce any bounced or reflected light. This is quite easy to do by ensuring that you are shooting against black, or by avoiding too much white in your surrounding area. Please see below for good and back background lighting examples.

Good Background

Bad Background

Markers

Markers are recommended to improve the accuracy of the photogrammetry solve.

Marso also requires the solved scene to be accurately scaled, so it is a good idea to have at least two markers and measure the distance between them, as this can be used to scale the scene.

If the subject is moving, for example on a turntable, it is crucial that the markers also move along with the object.

Framing

It is important to keep as much of the object within the frame where possible.

Perfect Framing

Okay Framing

Bad Framing

---

Coverage

Marso requires a high level of coverage, both above and below your asset. See our full coverage documentation here.

Replicating the coverage maps on this linked page will yield optimal results.

---

Files

Marso expects that all captured images for a single subject will be in a single folder. Files must also be named so that they sort alpha-numerically into the order they were captured in. Most cameras do this automatically.

Good

Cam_000, Cam_001, Cam_002, Cam_003, …

Names are in order

DSC_1234, DSC_1235, DSC_1236, DSC_1237, … Names don’t start at 0 but are in order

Bad

Cam_0, Cam_1, … , Cam_10, … , Cam_100 Numbers are not padded with 0s to the same length

Cam_000, Image_001, DSC_002, Cam_003, ... Numbers are ordered, but names are not

If you are using multiple lights, the captures for each position should be grouped in the order they were captured when sorted.

The simplest way to do this is to name the files with the position first, followed by the light: Position_X_Light_Y.dng