AI recreated heightmap in Alchemist

gnoop · Nov 2020

I decided to give Alchemist another try , especially its AI based heights reconstruction on a rocky subjects I heard it works nice with it . And I am getting kind of disappointing results. Wonder does anyone managed to make it better somehow,

left is photogrammetry , right is Alchemist AI rendered with shadows. I used one of the photos from same series i did for photogrammetry half.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/na/suz4b3i04kax.jpg

Looks like AI isn't there yet , Or maybe it's not a well trained for such subject ? Have anyone been able to get kind of sharper less melted down and more specific shape of things with it? Delighting also looks so so. Just like a quick hipass filter . Am I expecting too much of AI?

Can Alchemist mix AI and photogrammetry somehow ? Is there anything other cool and new to try in ALchemist?

Jerc · Dec 2020

Just wanted to point out that the normal to height filter in Alchemist is not using machine learning. It is a complex algorithm but no AI involved. Is the image on the left a height map only? it looks like it has actual geometry with concave angles and such.

gnoop · Dec 2020

I dropped a photo. one of those I used for photogrammetry , like this one

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ch/8uzz6qhcuh8e.jpg

and chose "image to material AI Powered" then exported this material and used its height map to displace a tessellated plane in ClarisseFX.

ps, Actually this time it turns better looking , not sure why but stones less melted down while using all same displacement settings

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/d6/xzs5rxakbv8y.jpg

It's kind of more acceptable , I wonder does Alchemist has a tool set to edit imported photogrammetry based pairs of color + height map? Fix bad areas, make seamless. re-compositing etc?

Year ago I tried to do so with Artomatix but ended up just using Zbrush + patch tool . Have never been satisfied enough with their AI. Still looking forward for an AI that could help to get rid of tedious things.

AI recreated heightmap in Alchemist

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