What is ReCap?

- [Instructor] There are a few different versions of ReCap, so in this video I'd like to start with what exactly is ReCap and what these different versions are and how they differ from one another. First of all, ReCap stands for reality capture. It's sort of a shortened version of reality capture. And there are four basic flavors of ReCap for us to talk about. There is ReCap, and this is the most basic version of ReCap and it's included actually with lots of the different Autodesk products. There's also the Pro version, ReCap Pro, which has more features than the basic version. There's a mobile version which works on an iPad Pro, and finally there's a product called ReCap Photo, which is really included in ReCap Pro. So you really can't get it as a separate thing, it's part of ReCap Pro. So let's go through each of these. ReCap is the basic version of the software, and it's main focus is to allow you to view and in some limited fashion make some edits to laser scan data. That's it's primary purpose. ReCap is included with many of the Autodesk products, so if you have AutoCAD or 3D Max or Revit, there's a pretty good chance that when you install those products it will actually install the basic version of ReCap as well. It supports dozens of file formats. So there's all sorts of hardware out there that can create point cloud data, and ReCap supports most of them, if not all of them. So that's one of the things that makes ReCap unique versus some of the other products out there that process point cloud data. Most of the other products support just one or two formats that are specific to a certain piece of hardware. ReCap is not hardware specific. It reads and writes all of the formats. And it's free. So anyone can download ReCap off the Autodesk website and use it as a tool to view and perform limited edits on point cloud data. Now if you want to do more with ReCap then you want the Pro version. And one of the most significant features of the Pro version is automatic registration. So when you capture scan data using the laser scanner, you usually do several different vantage points around the space that you're working in. Those various collection points have to be merged together into a single point cloud. And that's done through this process called registration. And ReCap has a really nice set of tools that allow this to happen virtually automatically. So there are certainly some times one will have to step in and do some manual tweaking to that. But for the most part the automatic registration is going to make the process very seamless and handle it in a very automated way. Now the Pro version also includes some video tools. There's some markup tools and some measuring tools, so once you're in that point cloud you'll be able to take measurements, mark it up, and create these really simple video files. There are cloud-based tools for cleanup and meshing. So with the cleanup you'll be able to remove extraneous objects like people walking through the scene or cars that were driving by that you don't want to include in the final point cloud. So that's a cloud-based service. It uploads the point cloud, processes it there, and updates your file with the changes. There's also a meshing service that allows you to also upload the point cloud and it will turn it into a 3D mesh in a variety of file formats. UAV data is supported. So if you have an unmanned aerial vehicle, or what people frequently refer to as a drone, and you've captured a bunch of data using that drone or UAV, that data can be brought into ReCap Pro and used to create point clouds and meshes. There's mobile support through the ReCap Mobile program and ReCap Pro is not free. So it does carry a subscription cost. Now if you bought one of the collections of Autodesk tools then chances are it includes ReCap Pro as part of the collection, but if you're buying it as a stand-alone product then there'll be a separate fee for that. You can learn details from your Autodesk reseller or wherever you buy your Autodesk software, they would have details on the pricing and what's included and what's not. Now if you have the Pro version and an iPad Pro, then you can use ReCap Mobile. Now ReCap Mobile's an app that you can download onto your iPad Pro, but with the Pro version of ReCap it will allow you to view, measure, and mark up your point clouds directly on the iPad. So that's kind of a nice feature. It allows you to sort of take those point clouds with you. If you also have the Leica BLK360 scanner then not only can you do the other things directly on the iPad but you'll actually be able to use the iPad to control the Leica scanner, and it will register on the fly as you're capturing those scans. So that full support is only supported currently with the BLK. Eventually this feature might be available for other scanners but we'll just have to wait and see how that plays out. But if you have the Leica BLK and the iPad Pro then you'll be able to do everything right in the field directly on the iPad. Now when you're working in ReCap Pro and you want to load in photographs instead of point clouds, process called photogrammetry, then what will happen is it will launch ReCap Photo. So photogrammetry is a process that takes several different photographs that you've taken around an object or around a building, and it compiles them all together and creates 3D data from those photographs. Now those photos can come from any source. You can use a DSLR camera, a UAV, or even a cell phone to capture those photos. They get uploaded to a cloud-based service and then it will calculate and process them to turn them into either a point cloud or a mesh file that you can then download back into ReCap Photo, and using local tools in the local application you can edit the mesh, measure it, and perform other modifications to it. Now there's a webpage of course on the Autodesk website for ReCap, so I'm at that overview page right now where you can watch some videos or learn more about it, even see some of the subscription details. And there's a comparison chart here, which will allow you to see side-by-side the differences between ReCap and ReCap Pro. Now you can watch this course in either version, ReCap or ReCap Pro. But I'll be using ReCap Pro, which means that if you want to get the most out of the course then I recommend that you have ReCap Pro because in some videos I'll be showing features that are only available in the Pro version of the software.