Tutorial Tuesday - DOWNLOAD Hypr3D model files

We recently surveyed our community and discovered that nearly half of our users have never downloaded the digital files created by hypr3D. These files can be used for many of the same purposes other 3D files can be used for: 3D printing, video games, interactive content development, and more.

Hypr3D produces 3 types of files:

  1. Textured 3D Model (geometry plus color texture from the original images)
  2. 3D Geometry (no texture, used mostly for 3D printing)
  3. 3D Point Cloud (used as a starting point for reverse engineering, 3D surface reconstruction, etc. but can also be used for visualisation)
Each of these files are available in a low resolution and high resolution. NOTE: If your intention is to edit the files or use them in another application, we recommend the high resolution files.

Downloading hypr3D model files is easy. 

Step 1) Log in to hypr3D with your account information and select the model you’d like to download. A full list of your models can be obtained by clicking “My Models” at the top of the screen.

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Step 2) On the model page, there is a section for DOWNLOADS (lower right, under the viewer). Here you can select any or all of the 5 model files we currently produce. The Model is our textured model (#1 above). The Surface Mesh is our geometry model (#2 above). Our low resolution files are the same ones we use in the Flash viewer on your model page.

Step 3) Select which files you want to download by checking the box(es). Next, click the Download button.

All of the files you selected will be zipped together with a filename “YourModelTitle-modelfiles.zip” and downloaded to your computer.


As we’ve mentioned previously - all of our model files can be opened, viewed, and lightly modified using the free application, Meshlab. We highly recommend Meshlab if you haven’t used it yet.

Downloading the hypr3D model files allows you to significantly expand the things you can do with hypr3D. Stay tuned for more tutorials about modifying your hypr3D models with Meshlab and other tools.
 

Tutorial Tuesday - Make my hypr3D model PRIVATE

While we would love all of the models made on hypr3D to be available in our public gallery, we understand that some users want to keep their hypr3D models private. Making a model private means that it will not appear in our Gallery or Search results, which also means that you will not be able to access it from our Hypr3D Model Viewer on iOS (we’re working on fixing that).

NOTE: Anyone with the direct URL to a private model will still be able to access that model.

Step 1) Log in to hypr3D with your account information and select the model you’d like to make private. A full list of your models can be obtained by clicking “My Models” at the top of the screen.

Step 2) On the model page, click “Edit Model” just below the title and thumbnail image in the upper left.
Step 3) On the Edit Model Information page, deselect the checkbox after “Do you want this model to be publicly visible?” 
Step 4) Click “Update Model” button.
Step 5) You will be redirected to the model page and should see a confirmation message that the model has been updated successfully. If you do not see the message, repeat steps 2-4.
SUCCESS! Now the only way to access this model is with the direct URL to this model page or in your “My Models” section once you’ve logged on to hypr3D.
Also, you can make a model private at any point after your images have been uploaded (even before the model is even finished processing) and you can make a private model public again by following the same steps. 

Hypr3D User Survey Results

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At hypr3D, we pride ourselves on responding quickly to user inquiries, working hard to help our users achieve whatever they’ve come to hypr3D to achieve. As we look to improve hypr3D for everyone, we put together a little survey to better understand why our users use hypr3D and what we can do to improve their experience. The results were eye-opening to say the least. 

Thanks to everyone who participated and congratulations to James Adams and Robin Hesse - our two survey respondents who won a 3D printed hypr3D model.

If you’d like to fill out the survey, it is still open at http://ow.ly/apqrd. Below are some interesting stats.

  • 66% of our users are downloading the digital files created by hypr3D.
  • 46% of users are using Meshlab after downloading those digital files. We love Meshlab!
  • Only 20% of our users are using the iOS mobile app, Hypr3D Viewer. If you’re not, download it now, it’s free and it’s awesome. (Yes, I’m biased!)

#1 Premium feature request

More (feedback), Better (Resolution), Faster (Processing) 

We hear you and we’re on it!

Some General Feedback - 

“u have eased my burden a lot as a modeller while I’m busy animating my characters!!!! thanks a lot….”

“Great site and service, still the best for easily producing aesthetic 3D models”

“Great work! This is the best site to show a model to somebody.”

Tutorial Tuesday - DELETE my hypr3D model

We encourage users to keep models on hypr3D, even if they don’t come out perfectly, because it helps the entire hypr3D community learn what works and what doesn’t. However, sometimes users just want to delete a model, so here’s how.

NOTE: Deleting a model is permanent. Please only delete a model if you are absolutely sure you do not need the model page or the model files.

Step 1) Log in to hypr3D with your account information and select the model you’d like to make private. A full list of your models can be obtained by clicking “My Models” at the top of the screen.

Step 2) On the model page, click “Edit Model” just below the title and thumbnail image in the upper left.
Step 3) On the Edit Model Information page, click the “Delete Model” link. Don’t worry if you click this accidentally, because you’ll have to confirm in Step 4.
 
Step 4) Confirm that you are sure you want to delete this model. NOTE: THIS IS PERMANENT. If you just want to hide the model from the gallery, you can make it private by deselecting the “Make publicly visible” check box below.
Step 5) You will be redirected to your “My Models” page and should see a confirmation message that the model has been updated successfully. If you do not see the message, repeat steps 2-4.
SUCCESS! That hypr3D model no longer exists. (We hope you build another one with us!)

Hypr3D Scans in the wild

We’ve been in contact with Matthew Plummer-Fernandez for a few months now about his work with 3D scanning, mesh creation and deconstruction, and 3D printing. We loved glitch prints, and now we’re a part of the MPF family with his latest tSet();

Awesome work. We’re glad to be a part of it.

Feature(s) of the Week

Last week the team at hypr3D implemented two new features that we hope will make the experience a little more useful; tags and comments.

During hypr3D’s private testing period, tags were a great tool for our users to search models of a particular subject or taken with a particular camera (we’re working on making cameras searchable this week!) and comments allowed us (Tom and Ash) to communicate with each user about each model, while allowing other users to benefit from that interaction.

As hypr3D grows (we’re over 700 users now, just one month after launch!), we hope to see the community take advantage of these tools to communicate with each other and make the 3D content being generated more useful for users to come.

Are there other features you’re interested in seeing implemented - hit us up at support at hypr3D.com with your suggestions.

-ash

hypr3D - Step by Step

Good morning hypr3Ders! Day 12 since launch and we’re seeing some AMAZING results from the community, along with quite a few interesting challenges for the hypr3D team. We’re always interested in your feedback, so let us know what you’re seeing.

We are in the process of finalizing some additional tutorials and FAQs, but in advance of their release, I thought it would be a good idea to help you better understand the process of creating a hypr3D model and help you understand why some models are processing and others, sadly :(, are not.

hypr3D uses a fully automated pipeline of algorithms, not people, to create your hypr3D model. Although we are working hard to make it more robust, it currently has a few requirements for a model to be successfully processed.

  • Requirement 1: Lots of different images of the same object from different perspectives with overlap from image to image. These different images help our algorithms determine the shape of your object. 
    • hypr3D Tip: A walk-around video helps alleviate the need to take a bunch of images.
  • Requirement 2: Camera data for your images (EXIF data). This information (most importantly the focal length used for your image and the make/model of the camera) helps our algorithms determine the original position of your camera as each image was captured.
    • hypr3D Tip: Don’t modify your images after you download them from your camera. Most software programs (like Photoshop) will delete this important data.
  • Requirement 3: TEXTURE! Make sure the object you are imaging has a good, non-repeating texture (think tree bark!). Shiny objects, translucent (see-through) objects, images with no texture (like a car) are very difficult to reconstruct in 3D because there are not enough distinct features in your images for our algorithms to match to other images in the set.
    • hypr3D Tip: If you don’t have a textured object, sometimes it helps to make sure the background is textured (concrete sidewalks, newsprint, or our sine noise pattern are good textured backgrounds).
    • hypr3D Tip #2: Repeating texture (plaid, checkerboard, etc.) is actually worse than no texture at all. Don’t use a repeating textured object or background with hypr3D.

If your images/video don’t meet the above criteria, we send you a note and let you know we are unable to process your model. You may have seen these emails from the support team, here’s what they mean…

  • Low hyprfactor - We were able to process your model, but it only used a small subset of the images you provided. You can usually avoid this by increasing the overlap in your images and/or making sure your main subject fills up the camera frame when you shoot.
  • Missing EXIF data - If you edit your images (or use images that don’t come from a camera, like a software program) this data will be missing. Without this data, we’re unable to create a good hypr3D model. We are working on this, but in the meantime, please upload the original images/video.
  • We were unable to process your model - Despite having good EXIF data, there just wasn’t enough information in the images for us to reconstruct your object in 3D. Make sure you have a lot of overlapping images of a textured object and try again. We take a look at each one of these for errors on our end, but if you think something went wrong, send us an email.

Hopefully this clears up some questions users have had about the emails we send when your model doesn’t get processed effectively. As always, if you have other questions or feedback, please reach out to us at support at hypr3d dot com and getsatisfaction.com/hypr3d.

Happy Reconstructing!

ash