Exporting surface normals

[ohammer]

Hello, I see this question has been asked before but not answered (?), so I try again: Is there a way to export the surface normals as a file from RTIviewer, or in some other way? I wrote a command-line script for this a long time ago (taking a PTM file as input), but it is cumbersome to use and the normal estimation is not very robust. I would like to have the surface normals in order to use the "whitening" procedures described by Hammer and Spocova (2013), "Virtual whitening of fossils using polynomial texture mapping".

Thanks a lot!

Øyvind Hammer, Natural History Museum, University of Oslo

 

[cdschroer]

Hello -

Sorry - I just saw this.  Somehow I didn't get notified when it was posted.  You can make a screen shot of the normals view - which will save at the full resolution of your underlying data (like any screen shot in the functionality.

A better option for you is likely the new RelightLab software from the Visual Computing Lab (same folks who wrote the RTiViewer many years ago). Exporting a Normal map is a function in that tool.  You can also open a previously created PTM or HSHS based RTI and convert it to the new formats designed for the web. I think you can produce a Normal map from an existing RTI as well - though I haven't tried that.  Check out the RelightLab forum for more info and links: https://forums.culturalheritageimaging.org/forum/47-relightlab/