Prerequisites and points cleaning (read this first)

Both RGB point clouds and RGB panorama images are needed for AIM to process your data. We cannot process datasets with only point clouds at the moment.

The displayed export methods ensure that AIM understands which points were seen from which scan position, and that the associated RGB photos are included in the export.

AIM can also display (drone) photogrammetry results exported as textured meshes.

Faro SCENE

Provide AIM with an export folder containing the following:

1. The point cloud in E57 format, into subfolder `"pointclouds"`:

a. In SCENE's Export tab, click the Export Scans button; from the dropdown

choose Export Scans - Ordered.

b. Choose E57 as the format.

c. Tick the checkbox [✘] Export each scan into a separate file.

d. Tick the checkbox [✘] Full Color Resolution Panorama Image.

■ If this checkbox is missing or if you have some scans that were

scanned without colour, go to Exporting full resolution panos from

SCENE.

■ If you use the Faro + Ricoh Theta integration instead of the builtin

scanner RGB camera, go to Exporting Ricoh panos.

Do not submit "Unordered" point clouds or "Project Point Clouds", as these do not

contain the original scanner positions.

2. Highly recommended:

The Project Point Cloud as E57 into subfolder "coloring-pointclouds".

SCENE's Project Point Cloud with Color Correction enabled makes for much better

colors. Unfortunately they do not retain scanner positions, which is why they are

needed in addition to the "Ordered Scans" export.

a. Disable all clipping boxes to ensure the project point cloud is not truncated.

b. In SCENE's Explore tab, click the Project Point Cloud button; from the

dropdown choose Create.

■ Tick the checkbox [✘] Apply Color Balancing.

■ (Optional but recommended): Tick Homogenize Point Density.

Choose a Cell Size of 2mm.

c. In SCENE's Export tab, click the Export Project Point Cloud button.

■ Choose E57 as the format.

Double-check that the number of files in the export folder is as expected.

You can find a screenshot of what the final export folder should contain in the section

Reviewing a SCENE export.

Step 1: Exporting ordered Scans via the Export tab:

Step 1 (alternative): Exporting a subset of the project as ordered scans via right-click in the project structure:

Steps 1 (b),(c),(d): Choosing the E57 file format, enabling separate files and pano images:

Step 2: Creating and exporting a color-corrected Project Point Cloud:

Exporting full resolution panos from of SCENE

You should follow the steps in this section if either:

● your version of SCENE is too old to have the checkbox [✘] Full Color Resolution

Panorama Image to embed the panos into the E57 files, or you scanned some

scans without colour and you want to display them in grayscale in AIM (SCENE

cannot currently embed grayscale panos into E57 files); in that case choose option

(b) below.

Then you should export the panos as separate files:

● Export the RGB image data, into subfolder "panos".

You have two choices:

a. Full-quality panoramas (recommended):

Right-click on the desired Project or Cluster, and choose Export,

Export Panoramic Images, Full Color Resolution.

b. Downsampled quality panoramas (not recommended, but faster and smaller):

Choose Scan Resolution instead of Full Color Resolution.

This will allow you to choose the image file type.

Prefer PNG (a lossless format) over JPEG (a lossy format).

Exporting Ricoh panos from SCENE

Only if you use the Ricoh Theta camera integrated with the Faro scanner as a replacement of the Faro internal RGB camera, you cannot use "Full Color Resolution Panorama Image" because the Ricoh images do not count as "full resolution". Instead:

In newer versions of SCENE (at least >= 2023.1), ensure each scan has a matching "PanCam Scan" otherwise, only grayscale intensity panos will be exported in the next step. If they do not exist yet, right-click your project and choose Operations, Create PanoCam Scans.

Into subfolder "panos", export the Ricoh images that SCENE reprojected onto the laser origin (noticeable as it creates white outlines around the edges of objects).
Right-click on the desired Project or Cluster, and choose Export,
Export Panoramic Images, Scan Resolution.

Optional, but very recommended:
Into the subfolder "external-panos", save the original Ricoh RGB photos.
You cannot retrieve them from SCENE, but instead from the scanner's SD card, from the folder of each scan ("fls") in the subfolder "PanoCam".
Note these images need to be in equirectangular, not double-fisheye format.
AIM can currently only process equirectangular Ricoh panos in this step.
If your panoramas are double-fisheye, you can skip this entire optional step.
If you provide these images, AIM can register them against the
SCENE-reprojected images above, so that they are shown in the tour as well.
Please check that these images are stitched equirectangular photos, not
double-fisheye circles.
Any double-fisheye circle photos need to be stitched into equirectangular first.

See Reviewing a SCENE export for the expected folder structure.

Exporting images from a non-Faro camera

SCENE optionally also supports importing photos that are made not by the laser scanner itself, but by a different camera mounted onto the scanner tripod in the same or a close-by position. It can colorise the scans using this external imagery.

You may want to use this external imagery in your AIM tour. In this case, the export steps remain the same, but you need to additionally provide the

external imagery into a folder: external-panos.

Be aware that if you have used external imagery for colorisation, the Export Panoramic Images functionality in SCENE will not export the external imagery, but re-colorised laser scans. You can recognise this by black or white outlines around objects:

Comparison between original external image vs.

exported colorised scan panorama with outline:

It would be desirable to show only the original imagery in the AIM tour, using the image positions that SCENE has already computed ("PictureFit"). However, to our knowledge, SCENE does not provide a way to export the exact pose data of the original images. Their positions can be slightly offset, and the images will usually be placed with an arbitrary rotation around the laser's vertical rotation axis.

In absence of an export method, you can provide AIM with the original images, and we will use photogrammetry to register (place) them automatically against the colorised scans you provided.

If your original panoramic images (must be in equirectangular format) are managed outside of SCENE (preferable), simply copy them into the external-panos folder.

If you can access them only through SCENE, re-export them by expanding the

Pictures section of each Scan in the Structure view, Right-click on the image file -> Export, and choose preferably a lossless format (e.g. PNG).

Exporting original imagery that was imported into SCENE: