Ansley Posted March 10, 2014 Report Share Posted March 10, 2014 Has anyone tried "repairing" their spheres that have become too scratched up? We are documenting rock art outside that often requires leaning the spheres against the rock. They have unfortunately become quite scratched up and I think it is making some of our data sets unusable. Should I try black glossy spray paint or just ask to purchase a new pair? Other ideas? Thank you, Ansley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marlin Posted March 10, 2014 Report Share Posted March 10, 2014 hi Ansley, firstly, I'm in a way, I'm glad, that you're spheres are scratched, because that means you are using them! however, bummer about the actual scratches them selves. The spheres that we sold you in the RTI Kit are billiard balls/spheres. They are made of polished resin. depending on just how bad the damage is, you might consider replacing the spheres. If the scratches are 'light weight' this product might be able to help: http://www.pooldawg.com/product/aramith-billiard-ball-restorer this product is similar to a rubbing compound for autos. let us know if you decided to test these product(s) Test the Spheres. You also might want to conduct a light test. In the RTI Builder app, there's a step where the user can inspect the location of the 'red cross hair' on the highlight. Maybe you can shoot an RTI of the damaged part of the sphere, and then go thru the processing phase and detect highlights ... to get a gauge on just how much the scratches are creating bad data --- if at all. Please do share you results if you learn anything significant or worthy. cheers.' marlin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 13, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 13, 2014 Thanks for the quick reply! I have been having trouble getting my photo sets to process lately. The cross hairs will not find the light source. When I review some of the photo sets, I can's see any movement in the frames, so I am hoping it is just due the the light scratches all over the spheres. If this is not the problem, I guess I can start pulling my hair out. I will do a cost analysis of the Aramith cleaner & restorer with shipping vs. a new pair of 1" spheres. Cheers, Ansley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdschroer Posted March 14, 2014 Report Share Posted March 14, 2014 I have a couple of quick notes here - First, I think Marlin assumed you were using the larger cue balls, not the 1 Inch spheres. The one inchers are made of a different substance - phenolic plastic, and so I'm not sure how well the restorer product would work on them - as it was designed for the cue balls, which are a resin based product. More importantly, I'm not sure I understand what problem you are seeing in RTiBuilder. We have some scratched up spheres, but we are still able to process the results. I think you are reporting that RTIBuilder can't detect the highlight in some (all?) of the images? Is that correct? Can you upload a screen shot of RTiBuilder that shows what youa re seeing. We just haven't experienced a problem that prevented processing. Carla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marlin Posted March 14, 2014 Report Share Posted March 14, 2014 Ah, yes, Thanks Carla, I did assume that you were using the cue ball spheres. whoops. I doubt that the restorer would work on the repair. Can you share a quick pic of the scratches? I'm curious to see the physical damage on the surface. marlin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 17, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2014 I hope my pasted images are viewable. Lately all my RTI photo sets will not "define the highlight." In a number of those cases I realized there was movement (windy days) and that I had sometimes forgotten to flip the "auto focus to manual" lever on the base of the camera when I was in manual mode. I can't detect movement in some of the other photo set thought. I just went back and reprocessed an old photo set that had worked in the past and it worked again. So, I must assume there is something wrong with how we are doing this in the field. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 17, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2014 I see my images did not paste. I am looking at the various help topics and do not see how to do this properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdschroer Posted March 17, 2014 Report Share Posted March 17, 2014 Ansley, You can't paste images, you need to "attach them" If you don't see an "Attach files" option with a paperclip at the bottom of the post window, then click on the button and you will see this. You can then browse to the file or files and then click "attach this file" We have a limited amount of disk space for the forum, so if you can down rez the images, or crop to just the spheres (or a screen shot in rtibuilder is fine) that will help us. Carla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 17, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2014 Snapshot of scratched spheres. I was not sure how to attach a screen shot. It would not let me upload a word file with the screen shot pasted and reduced in size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdschroer Posted March 17, 2014 Report Share Posted March 17, 2014 A screnshot should just be an image file and you should be able to upload it dirctly (i.e. not by putting it in a word file) I thought we allowed word files to be uploaded, but I'll need to check the settings. What we really need to see is an image from your RTI image set so we can see what the hightlights look like on the spheres. You can crop in to just show us the spheres. I will also note that the RTIBuilder should still find highlights and build an RTI for you, even if there is movement in the image set. Your result won't be very good, in that it will be blurry if the images aren't aligned. However, you shouldn't have problems with RTiBuilder in that case. Carla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 17, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2014 Okay. I figured out the screen shot conversion into a jpg. When I scroll through each individual image, the highlight is defined except for the first image (which I intentinally left out due to the grey card in the image). When I get to the last screen to "execute," I get the "unknown error detected" message box. Thank you, Ansley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 17, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2014 Oops, with the file this time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdschroer Posted March 20, 2014 Report Share Posted March 20, 2014 Ansley - I have never seen anything like you are experiencing. Can you tell me whether the "highlight not defined" message comes up for al the images or just some images or just one image? In the screen from the above screenshot you can click on individual thumbnails to see if there is a highlight (a little red cross) or whether you see this message. RTIBuilder doesn't use images where it can't find a highlight, but it should still work. Unless you don't have any images with highlights. You can also upload the project .xml file which might give us more clues. Please also answer the above question though. Carla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 20, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2014 I was mistaken. The highlight is defined in all but the first image. I "unchecked the box" so that the first image would not be included in defining the highlight since it is a grey card image. This set will not process as a PTM. I have just tried the HSH fitter though and it worked. The XML file is attached. Thank you, Ansley CA-LAN-375_p1_spA_e14.xml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdschroer Posted March 20, 2014 Report Share Posted March 20, 2014 Ansley - Looks like this log fle shows only the successful build of the HSH file. Is there a separate xml file for the ptm? That's the one I need to see (the one that isn't working) Also, one think you could try first, is to open RTiBuilder and chose the Highliht Based PTMFitter option then clisck on "open existing project" (at the bottom of the screen) Browse to the file you sent me here, and see if you can build a ptm. I think you started over to build the hsh, so maybe whatever was wrong in the first attempt is fixed now. (there are instructions for reprocessing an image set in the User Guide on the last page) Carla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 20, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2014 I am attaching the XML of the failed PTM. I just tried processing it (as a new project) after I had the successful HSH. I will try re-prosessing the HSH as a PTM next week. Thank you, Ansley CA-LAN-375_p1_spA_e14-B.xml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdschroer Posted March 21, 2014 Report Share Posted March 21, 2014 Ansley - I think I can see your problem from the log file. The first time you build a PTM, you have to tell RTiBuilder where the ptmfitter (from HP) is installed. The HSHFitter is included with RTiBuilder. The path to the ptmfitter that is showing up in your log file is a default path to a folder inside of rtibuilder. I suspect that you actually installed the fitter somewhere else. Try browsing to the ptmfitter wherever it is installed on your computer. I'll add a note to explain why the ptmfitter isn't included with RTiBuilder. It is a licensing issue. RTIBuilder and the HSHFitter are both made available under the GNI General Public License, which is an open source license. The PTMFitter was developed at HPLabs and HP makes it available under a ver different kind of license, which is free for non-commercial use, but no source code is available. So we can use the software if you go get it and install it and tell us where it is, but we can't include it with our software because of this license clash. Carla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 24, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2014 Carla, Thanks so much for continuing offer advice! I had wondered if the PTM fitter had been placed right when we went through java-rti software-windows problems before. But, I am able to process PTM's of older photo sets as "new projects" again with out issue. Here is where we placed the PTM fitter: C:\Temp\RTIbuilder_v2_0_2\Plugins\PTMfitter Here is a screen shot of one step above the path listed above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdschroer Posted March 26, 2014 Report Share Posted March 26, 2014 Ansley, I don't think the problem is spheres. I can't see anything obvious about what the problem is though. I will note that your .xml file shows that your fitter path is inside a temp directory. That is kind of an odd place to install software. This is the path it shows: PTMfitter Path : C:\Temp\RTIbuilder_v2_0_2\Plugins\PTMfitter\PTMfitter.exe But if the software in the same location is working on older data sets, then where it is installed shouldn't matter. It looks like the RTIBuilder properly calculated light positions for all (or most) of your images. I know you had one image for which no highlight was detected. The software should just skip that image, and not include it in the light position file that it creates (.lp file found in your assembly-files folder) Can you upload the .lp file from the assembly-files folder? There may be more than one - this is the one that it is trying to use: CA-LAN-375_p1_spA_e14-B.lp Carla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted March 26, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 26, 2014 Carla, I agree it is not the spheres now that I can process an HSH. Our IT Department has a new policy that the software needed to be inside the Temp directory. I tried uploading the lp file and got this error message, Error You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file Thank you, Ansley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ansley Posted April 3, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2014 I have tried reprocessing an HSH as a PTM and still get the dreaded "Unknown Error Detected" message box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdschroer Posted April 11, 2014 Report Share Posted April 11, 2014 Once we figured out this wasn't spheres, the discussion was completed over in the processing forum: http://forums.culturalheritageimaging.org/index.php?/topic/316-problems-processing-ptm-vs-hsh/ Issue turned out to be that Ansley was using uppercase JPG in her file names, and the ptmfitter won't accept that. A discussion of this issue can be found here: http://forums.culturalheritageimaging.org/index.php?/topic/241-error-processing-ptm-stack/?hl=renamer&do=findComment&comment=539 Carla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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