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AliceVision
AliceVision provides 3D Computer Vision tools and libraries. It makes it possible to perform 3D reconstructions from photographies taken with all types of cameras, from professional cameras to smartphones. These photogrammetry tools are 100% free and accessible to all. The main graphical user interface built around AliceVision is called Meshroom.

Meshroom
Meshroom is a full-featured photogrammetry software, with a default workflow for standard use cases, a nodal editor with caching mechanism, mesh post-processing, and re-texturing after retopology.

Meshroom enables users to calculate their 3D reconstruction locally or on renderfarm.

The nodal interface allows users to adapt the reconstruction pipeline to their needs and to adjust the compromise between the computation time and the quality of the result.

The solution takes advantage of the GPU for some of the most expensive computation steps. The proposed solution is scalable with respect to the number of images - it is capable of handling data sets of more than 1.000 images.

Meshroom relies on standard and open-source file formats (OpenEXR, Alembic (computer graphics), OBJ) to promote interoperability. Integrations are offered integrations with other content creation software] such as Blender®, Maya® (Autodesk) and Houdini® (SideFX).

Applications
AliceVision is a 3D Computer Vision library started in 2010. It is implemented in C++ with some steps in CUDA. It provides a whole set of algorithms for feature extraction, image matching, features matching, camera calibration and localisation, depth maps estimation, meshing and texturing.

Meshroom has been used since 2014 in digital environment creation for the Visual Effects industry (feature films and commercials), as well as for a few years across other industries like cosmetics, sporting goods manufacturing, augmented reality surgery, real estate industry…

AliceVision Association
The AliceVision project is supported by the ALICEVISION association, a non-profit organization whose ambition is to democratize 3D digitization technologies from photographs. The association was created in July 2020 by 14 founding members from the European academic and industry sector, who have been collaborating in the field of 3D computer vision for cultural and creative industries since 2010.

The association considers 3D digitization technologies essential for many applications for the common good, especially for culture and artistic creation.

Open Source
The project is released under the MPLv2 open source license.

AliceVision framework aims to provide a strong software basis with state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms that can be tested, analyzed and reused. Links between academia and industry is a requirement to provide cutting-edge algorithms with the robustness and the quality required all along the visual effects and shooting process.

This open approach enables both visual effects end-users and other users to achieve a high degree of integration and easy customisation for any production pipeline.

Technical requirements
Meshroom is available as pre-built packages for Linux and Windows.

One step in the pipeline (the DepthMap node) requires an NVidia graphics card (with at least CUDA compute capabilities greater than version 2.0). The minimal computer configuration is 8 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM and an NVidia GPU with 386 CUDA cores and 1 GB VRAM.

Porting the CUDA code to other parallel architectures is currently challenging because the code uses the NVidia cards’ texture engine very heavily to avoid border condition and interpolation in software.

Milestones

 * 2015 : First open source version of Meshroom (SfM only)
 * 2016 : First open source version of CCTag with CPU and GPU implementations
 * 2016 : First open source version of PopSift
 * 2018 : AliceVision / Meshroom conference at FMX 2018 (Stuttgart)
 * 2018 : Meshroom first release as a complete 3D reconstruction pipeline (with both SfM and MVS)
 * 2018 : AliceVision Bird of a Feather at Siggraph 2018 (Vancouver)
 * 2019 : New versions of Meshroom (2019.1 and 2019.2) with a new user interface, improved mesh and texture.
 * 2019 : Meshroom Bird of a Feather at Siggraph 2019 (Los Angeles)
 * 2020 : AliceVision session at ASWF (Academy SoftWare Foundation) Open Source Days (during online Siggraph)
 * 2020 (coming soon) : New version of Meshroom (2020.1) with new HDR Panorama pipeline

Versions
See the history of all the features released in https://github.com/alicevision/meshroom/blob/develop/CHANGES.md