meshroom CLI

Python script to control the phtogrammetry software Meshroom directly from the command line without the use of its GUI

Description

Meshroom is an open source tool for creating 3d models out of images, the purpose of this repository is create a code that can use the CLI tool of the software to automate the process of creating 3d meshes.

Technologies used:

• Python 3.10
• Meshroom 2023.3.0

Setup

The code of the project is located in the Meshroom_CLI.py script, which contains a function for each of the nodes used in Meshroom. The Main function of the script call all the nodes one by one creating folders for each of the steps. Additionally, there is a batch file called Run.bat which calls the Main function of the python script with three arguments:

python meshroom_CLI.py 
##PATH_TO_BIN_FOLDER_OF_MESHROOM## 
##PATH_OF_FOLDER_TO_PUT_THE_MODEL##
##PATH_OF_FOLDER_WITH_IMAGES##
##DOWNSCALE_RATE_FOR_IMAGES##

The user can provide 3 paths (compulsory) and 1 double value (optional) separated by single blank spaces and using absolute paths, paths should be written inside quotation marks:

• The path to the Bin folder, located in the Meshroom directory /aliceVision (in the 2023.3.0 version)
• The folder for the outputs. If the folder doesn't exist the script will create a new one
• The folder containing the images. It should onnly contain image files and nothing else.
• The value downsample_factor describing how much the input images to be downscaled before 3D reconstruction.

The code can be called used the .bat file (which has to be previously modified with the 3 folders), here is an example:

python meshroom_CLI.py "C:\Users\user\Desktop\Meshroom-2023.3.0\aliceVision\bin" "C:\Users\user\Desktop\Output" "C:\Users\user\Desktop\Images" 2.0

The user can of course call the python file from the command line without using the bat file.

Last argument downsample_factor:=2.0 represents a factor halves both width and height of the images.

Output

The script generates 15 folders:

• 0_DownsampledImages
• 1_CameraInit
• 2_FeatureExtraction
• 3_ImageMatching
• 4_featureMatching
• 5_structureFromMotion
• 6_PrepareDenseScene
• 7_DepthMap
• 8_DepthMapFilter
• 9_Meshing
• 10_MeshFiltering
• 11_MeshDecimate
• 12_MeshResampling
• 13_Texturing
• 14_convertSFMFormat

The final mesh containing the texture(s) should be in the 13_texturing folder.

The dense point cloud output should be in the last folder (14_convertSFMFormat).

The script

The script contains 15 functions (one for each node). Each function calls an .exe file located in the Bin folder of the Meshroom directory and passes the necesary parameters to run it. In general, all the meshroom functions requiere one or various input files and and output files. Specifically, each function requires some other parameters. For our use, we only set as variables the parameters that we consider to be necesary for our workflow. These parameters are set as parameters in the functions. All the other parameters are hardcoded.

Small image set

For testing purposes, there is a small tomato plant data set (dataset_tomato01).