This is a follow up to my previous video/post* on how to scan object into 3d models with just a camera using Regard3d (a free Photogrammetry program).

In this video I go in depth into Regard 3Ds settings with visual comparisons and compare different scanning/lighting setups, to show you how you can get the cleanest scan possible.

*It's not really necessary to have seen the previous video unless you get confused in the program about where to click or how to do something.

In fact, quite a few things didn't work for one reason or another in that video, anything I say here overrides whatever I said in that one, specifically the following:

• Using a Turntable - It is in fact the best and easiest way to scan things.
• Ink Stains - Seems like they might actually cause more problems sometimes.
• The Incremental Reconstruction Engine - It works for me now, and it so much better than the Global Reconstruction.
• The Texture Bug - If you did not know already, it has been fixed, so it's no longer a problem.

Presentation

You can find the presentation below (or direct link). This is what I will keep updated.

Updates

I do not have the time at the moment to convert the presentation to a write up. So in case anything else pops up in the future, if anybody finds better settings or something, I will keep a list here, detailing changes/updates to the presentation.

Test Picture Sets

You can find the test picture sets (all CC-BY licensed) along with other potentially useful links here: Photogrammetry Test Sets.

If you use the picture sets for a video or blog post and/or find something interesting about the settings, I'd love to know, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.

Additionally if you have any picture sets you're willing to contribute, mine are all hosted in individual repos in a gitlab group, so it's easy to add other's repos to it, see the Contributing section in the link above.

Links

Regard3d

BES

For the point cloud comparisons I used a free program called CloudCompare.

If you're interested in sculpting, you can see how I made the skull sculpt here.

Other News (3D Printer, Life, Perspective Videos)

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In this video I'll show you how to setup everything so you can remote debug Blender from VS Code to make it easier to develop and debug addons and the source code by adding breakpoints and stepping through your code.

If you're a programmer and you're semi-familiar with Python, VS Code, and the command line, you can probably just read the documentation on github and it'll make sense, but I know I would have been stumped as a beginner and I really think the extra setup is well worth it, even more so if you're a beginner. I only got started messing with Blender addons a few weeks ago and this has made it so much easier to code.

Links

Python

Blender Debugger for VS Code Addon + Documentation

I would have put this on my coding blog, but I don't really have that set up properly yet or active, I'll put a link when I do.

Update

So I haven't been posting any videos for several reasons but mainly because my laptop's fan started making a lot of noise. It sounded like it was on the verge of dying, so I didn't want to leave anything rendering on it. Initially I just planned to replace it but the only place that could get me the right model gave me a ridiculous quote (like $60) for what was probably a third party $5 chinese fan and I didn't want to go through the trouble of importing it myself.

I thought, to hell with it, I'd rather save up and switch to a desktop, their parts are actually priced reasonably (by which I mean ~1.5 x US prices instead of 2-2.5 like nearly everything else, kill me) and it's easier to upgrade/repair. Also it's not like I move around as much as I used to when I bought the laptop. The only thing it really had going for it at this point was the battery because there's a lot of power outages where I live, but then battery started to die for the third time now, so even more reason to replace it. The only thing I'm sad about is that the 16GB RAM sticks I had ordered for it finally arrived (along with quite a few other art supplies and stuff I hope to be reviewing soon). I tested those for a while and I just cannot go back to just 8GBs anymore.

Parts

This is technically my first build. I have completely disassembled/reassembled laptops for cleaning/fixing, and I've changed parts on PCs, but never from scratch. I read up a bit before doing it, got stuck a few times with the cables, but all in all it was honestly the easiest part. If you've never built a PC there's plenty of videos showing you how to connect everything step by step, I won't even bother. I think it was harder to choose the parts and make sure they were all compatible and had what I needed more than anything else. There's websites like PC Parts Picker that can help you, but just because the parts are compatible doesn't mean that's they're best you can buy for the money or that all the parts are taking full advantage of each other.

Motherboard and CPU

A great example of that is the motherboard and the CPU. Sure you could get the cheapest motherboard that supports the cheapest CPU that meets your needs, but that probably wouldn't be the best idea.

For example, Intel's 7400 i5 is about the same price here as AMD's Ryzen 1500X. Before Ryzen, AMD vs Intel was a no-brainer, but now, Ryzen chips are better for the price at nearly everything except gaming. But supposing they were the same, that specific i5 (the cheapest) is also locked, while the Ryzen isn't which means it can be overclocked. And there's the plus that AMD doesn't plan to change the AM4 socket for 4 years (Intel changes their's every 2 years).

Here's where picking a motherboard can get tricky. Motherboards have three main compatibility criteria:

• Form Factor - which just means the size (this only matters if you want a small case)
• Socket - which has to match the CPU
• Chipset - which is like the brain's of the motherboard and determines what the motherboard does/doesn't support in terms of overclocking, CrossFire/SLI (multiple graphics cards), and a few other things that usually aren't too important (e.g. max number of SATA and USB connections, RAID support, etc).

Ryzen Chipsets

Chipset	A320	B350	X370
Overclocking	No	Yes	Yes
Crossfire	No	Yes	Yes
SLI	No	No	Yes

As you can see to take advantage of the Ryzen 1500X and overclock it I needed to get at least the B350. The X370 is overkill for me because I won't be able to afford a 1070 (the minimum needed to SLI) anytime soon, let alone two, and looking at benchmarks a single 1080 still seems to do better than two 1070s.

I didn't even bother comparing the Intel chipsets because the difference between just a locked/unlocked i5 was much greater than the difference between the A320 and the B350 motherboards for the Ryzen.

After looking at several B350 motherboards I ended up going with a GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 because it was cheap and has a dual bios and bios flashes are always dangerous and I knew it was likely to need a few updates and I've had a motherboard die trying to upgrade the BIOS to support a new graphics card. It had some bad reviews, but most of them were complaining about problems with the BIOS and since it's fairly new that's to be expected. I updated and everything is working fine. It's best to do this manually through a USB btw instead of from within an OS through an app, check your motherboard for specific instructions.

I was able to overclock just fine. Also my RAM auto-overclocked itself to 2400MHz without having to enable X.M.P. or anything. More on that below.

Overclocking the CPU

I tried two different ways to overclock, through the BIOS and through AMD's Ryzen Master. I initially had the same problems with Ryzen Master. At one point it wouldn't reset to defaults, and even the defaults when applied felt a little bit different than the real defaults (after restart/uninstalling). So I went to the BIOS, disabled Core Performance Boost, Global C-State Controls, and Cool'n'Quiet as recommended and I got a stable (w/ 1 hour stress test) overclock at 3.8GHz @ 1.38V (+1.26 offset) with max temps of 67°C. I could get 3.9GHz but at 1.45V (+2.00 offset) with temps reaching 76°C, which I would not leave for long term use. Btw I used HWiNFO to get the voltage reading because it looked like the most accurate (and Ryzen would not read voltage when overclocked from the BIOS).

I then went to enable Global C-State Controls and Cool'n'Quiet again (not Core Performance Boost!) to see if I could get the CPU to downclock when idle. It was stable but it wouldn't lower the frequency, just the voltage, not sure what that means? So I switched back to using Ryzen Master because it downclocks properly. The only problem with it is it doesn't apply the overclock on startup, you have to apply it manually, it's not too much of a bother, it's kind of nice I can only turn it on if I know I'll need it.

RAM

Like I mentioned after trying 16GB I could not got back to 8GB. Photoshop especially can handle much larger canvases than it used to and now I can run 3-4 large programs and 20 Chrome tabs at the same time and have yet to reach 100%, it's great.

I got a single Kingston Fury DDR4 2400Mhz 16GB stick that "auto-overclocked" itself to 2400Mhz from the start (on the BIOS it came with, version F4). I say "auto-overclocked" because the advertized speed is already an overclock, it's like the speed it's been tested to be stable at, but some memories need to be manually enabled in the BIOS by enabling X.M.P. to run above 2133Mhz.

It should be possible to overclock it further, but I have not tried it yet.

Graphics Card

I got a 1050 Ti with 4GBof VRAM and I got the best one I could find, a Zotac OC edition with dual fans. I was tempted to get a 1060 3GB but I only I had enough money to "push" one thing (RAM, CPU, or GPU) and I chose RAM because of the reasons I said and also because any graphics card would be an improvement over what I was using. I reasoned if I found it lacking, I would then save up for something a lot better (at least the 6GB 1060).

In the video though I'm using an old 545 just because the graphics card hadn't arrived yet. I was going to sell it, but the 1050 Ti makes the screen freeze a bit when rendering because the Ryzen doesn't have built-in graphics, so I might just keep it to drive the display.

Power Supply

So the market here for power supplies is 90% cheap Senteys, then 18% were known brand names (Thermaltake, etc) but they were often overpriced for the quality of the PSU (look up Tier lists online). They were all Tier 4, which is better than an untiered unrated Sentey anyday, but it's usually recommended you get something better if you're overclocking.

There were no Tier 1 PSUs available, but there a few (2%) Tier 2 PSUs: Seasonic's (S12II and M12II) but they were 520W (Bronze rated, non-modular) and 620W (Bronze, modular) respectively, and for a little bit less than the 620W one there was an XFX XTR 650W which was Gold rated and modular. Although the computer doesn't need anything near even 500W, I got the XFX because it was the best value for the price and basically future proof. Unlike the graphics card which is easy to sell, I imagine it's a bit harder to sell a used PSU. Also, now that I might use both graphic's card, I'm even more glad I got it.

If you know nothing about Power Supplies, like I said, look at a Tier list and get the best you can afford. A basic White 80 Plus rating is a must, but that doesn't guarantee quality. The rating is just how power efficient the PSU is, though of course because you need better components to achieve better efficiency the higher ratings have some correlation with quality (if the PSU you find happens to not be tiered). Apart from quality though, it's good to get a high rating if you'll be leaving things to render overnight, etc.

Case

Much like with the PSU, 80% of the market is Sentey cases, with the rest being way overpriced because they tend to import the nicest brand name models. Unlike the PSU though there isn't as much of a problem going cheaper so long as you shop around, and I found this nice Sentey GS-6000 model that came with 4 fans (one of which is a huge 120mm side fan), a dust filter, an SD card reader, and 4 HDD bays for 3.5" and 2.5" drives. Ph and a fan controller, but I didn't use it.

Now it had it's problems, the frontal HDD fan didn't work (but I had everything built by then and couldn't care to replace it), and the HDD bays were badly designed. They did not fit 2.5" drives as advertised which is something I wanted because I have three 2.5" drives. Well technically they did fit, you can screw them in, but they're so far in, you can't connect them to the power supply or the data cables. I had to drill holes along the edge of the bracket, add masking tape where the circuitry touched the metal, and secure the back with masking tape as well.

But I was kind of expecting something to go wrong so I don't regret it. In the end it worked just fine. The drives have been fine with my fix, and apart from the SSD (which didn't need any masking tape or anything because it's all plastic), I will probably replace the drives for 3.5" drives in the future. I will replace that frontal fan someday when it needs cleaning, otherwise the other fans have worked great, they're nice and silent (compared to a cheaper Sentey case I've heard), there's good ventilation, and all the other buttons/connections/LEDs work.

Monitor

Lastly I want to take a moment to rant about monitors for a second. On my laptop I had a monitor that covered of the ~95% NTSC color gamut. The colors on it were great. As far as I know it's a TN panel and it's viewing angles are superb. I love it.

Now there aren't any affordable monitors here with a similar color gamut, so it was either a cheap TN or a cheap IPS, so I thought ok, I'll get an IPS, I heard they were great. Well I honestly don't understand how people can say that (well I can see it compared to a cheap TN panel, but not a good one).

I got an LG 24MP48HQ-P and at first I didn't notice the IPS glow. Something seemed off about the colors, the black and grays seemed off, I thought it was just a transition from a good monitor to an ok one, I kept fiddling with the settings and couldn't make it look right. Then I put it next to my monitor and I noticed the viewing angles were just awful. All the viewing angles were way worse because of the IPS glow. Even compared to other TN monitors around the house, even compared to the old Dell one I ended up using which has the worst viewing angles. Once I saw the glow I could not unsee the glow.

Now I do sit very close (~40cm) because that's what I'm used to and also I'm having some eye problems and that's the farthest I can see with my glasses, but the monitor needed at least a meter for the glow to go away which is a ridiculous distance and this was WITH ambient light. I don't know if higher quality monitors (like a Dell Ultrasharp) are better, but I still find reports about IPS glow for even expensive monitors, so I don't want to buy anything else without seeing it and here it's very rare for monitors to be on display for some reason and there are NO return policies. I have seen a few TN monitors on display but they were clearly bad quality. I'm stuck now trying to resell this thing and don't want to be stuck with another. There are a few AMVA panel monitors, but I can't find much info on how the blacks compare to a good TN panel, only how they're better than IPS, but how much better? If anybody knows I'd love to hear. It's either that or I'm considering getting the more expensive 144Hz TN monitors used for gaming because on reviews they seem to have decent viewing angles like my laptop's monitor.

Also anybody know why some TN monitors can achieve better viewing angles? I remember I used to own one of those convertible tablet PCs and the TN screen had horrible viewing angles, it was only 12" but if you didn't look at it dead on, the colors distorted A LOT. So when I was shopping for my laptop I made sure to get a screen that had good viewing angles and it did.

EDIT: This post is outdated. The bug has been fixed.

If you saw my previous post/video about scanning objects into 3d models you'll know the current version of the program I used, Regard3D, has a bug with exporting objects with image textures.

The developer is aware of it and it should get fixed eventually, but in the meantime, a viewer sent me an email with a better workaround so I thought I'd go over it.

In the video I mentioned one way to get around it, and that is to use colored vertices, but as was pointed out to me, this creates much fuzzier textures at equal resolutions whereas an image texture will retain it's detail no matter the resolution of the model. I personally did not care about them so I didn't really investigate further, but the solution is embarrassingly simple if I would have thought about it more than two seconds.

We know the program saves everything as it creates it to the project directory and it can correctly make and read textured models from there so the files in the project folder must be fine, the bug occurs only when a model is exported.

Steps

So what we can do is once we created our surface model with image textures (Colorization Type should say Textures), instead of exporting it, note down it's path in our project tree. For the picture set, just count which it is from 0.

Then open up the project folder in your computer and navigate to the path (e.g. Project Folder > pictureset_1 > matching_0 > triangulation_0 > densification_1 > surface_0). Once there you'll see a bunch of files. We need the obj file (our model), the mtl or material library file (tells programs where to look for the textures), and the texture images. Copy them manually wherever you wanted to export them to.

Now we can import these into Blender (make sure your import extension for obj files is on) and they should work import automatically. If the textures aren't showing up just make sure you're using the Blender render engine and that you're in the texture view. This is how Blender imports them by default. To use them with a different rendering engine you'll have to connect the textures manually.

Pros & Cons

Colored Vertices	Image Textures
Fuzzy Textures	Detailed Textures
Smaller File Size at Same Detail	Much Larger but…
Looks Much Worse at Low Resolutions*	Same Texture Detail at Low Resolutions*
Computes Faster (2x +)	Computes Slower (but again ^)
Duller/Less Reflective	Captures more lighting artifacts.**

*This is because with colored vertices the amount of detail is tied to the amount of points, whereas with image textures, the texture is always the same resolution so it preserves it's details no matter the mesh's resolution.

This is why in the image below, even though we're at the same mesh resolution, the colored vertices make the texture look fuzzy.

**By less reflective I mean that you don't get a lot of weird really light areas, especially if you had uneven lighting or scanned the model by turning it instead of turning the camera around the model. This causes lighting artifacts which are more noticeable when using image textures. I'm not 100% sure why that is, but it means using colored vertices might still be the better option if you don't care about the textures of your objects, just the color, and you want the scan to process faster.

For example, if you were scanning a smooth multi-colored toy, you'd need to add texture to it somehow like I did with this model by spraying it with ink. So you'd have to paint the model by hand anyways if you wanted textures, so you'd only really need a rough reference of the object's colors, image textures would be overkill.

Anyways, here are some more examples for comparison.

And here are some closeups, you can see how much detail the second one appears to hold even though the mesh is quite simple. If you have a keen eye you'll notice the textures aren't 100% the same, that's just because the program pieces them together slightly different at the different resolutions, but you can see the amount of detail is the same.

Other Notes

For those who might be wondering if it's possible to salvage the exported raw file, I did think it might be a simple bug, maybe an extra line or symbol or something that could be corrected by just editing the raw file, but the file is missing a lot of coordinates. Still I can open it in Meshlab and all the points are there, so if for some reason you lost all the files by this one, you could use the points to do the poisson surface reconstruction from there, though of course, you wouldn't be able to salvage the textures.

Here's the initial thumb sized study:

In this video I'll be showing you how you can turn almost any object into a 3D model with just your camera and some free software.

Now I'm not an expert at any of this. I've tried as best as possible to read through all the documentation, at least the parts I understand, and condense that into a video.

Also please note the cleanup process was aimed at getting it ready for sculpting. I know that people like to scan objects to then 3d print them, but I don't have a 3d printer, so you'll have to look somewhere else for the details on how to do that properly.

Lastly, I would love to share the project file so you can see what I tested but it's HUGE (15GB) and I'm not sharing the 3d model just yet because it's an original character of mine so I'm working on a generic version for practicing lighting the face, the first version is now available for patreons.

Intro

So there are free programs out there like Autodesk 123D Catch (which was a bit limited when I checked it out) and there are some open source programs like VisualSFM but I wanted something that was both open source, and therefore free (w/ no patent issues) AND allowed for commercial use, and the only program that seemed to satisfy that requirement was Regard3D. Also it's the only one of the open source programs that takes you from the photos to the finished model. Otherwise you might have needed 2-3 different programs as this blog post illustrates.

Regard 3D Pros:

• Open source
• All-In-One Solution
• Advanced options. (but also works well out of the box)
• Simple Nice UI.
• Branching (saves past parameters)
• File "Autosaves" Crashes only loose what was computing.
• Allows Exporting (of sparse and dense point clouds as well as models)

Cons:

• Texture bug (solution). Has been fixed.
• Resource intensive, but then most photogrammetry programs are.

The Pictures

The ideal way would be to have the camera rotate around the object with plenty of soft lights. Alas, I could not do that, so my setup was more like two desk lamps which I diffused as much as possible with a piece of paper and a blank white background. I then rotated the object instead of the camera.

The moving highlights and shadows can cause some problems, but I was able to get a decent scan this way anyways.

Unless your object is made of glass (in which case you'll have to coat it in something so it's matte), and not too glossy it should work.

Texture

Even if the surface is matte though you need some texture else you won't get any matches. For this you can splatter some ink, or watercolors, or something (test the pigment will not stain first). This will help a lot if your object is a sculpt like mine with minimal texture. Without it the software has no good reference as to where anything is in space.

How many pictures to take?

More is always better, but there is also a point where this will just slow down your computer. I recommend 4 different height angles and about ~16 photos each round. In total I took about 74 photos for this not including the extras.

Also if possible your photos should all be with the same camera at the same focal length.

Regard 3D

Adding Images

First create a project: File > New Project. Select where it's going to store the files (it can take up many GBs, mine was ~15GBs by the end of this with so many tries) and the name.

In the lower left you'll see a button that says Add Picture Set...

Here you can add all your image files. It might take a few seconds for them to load all the metadata. Make sure the camera model, focal length, and sensor size are set. If the sensor size is not set in the newest version you can now set it manually (right click) if the program could not find your camera model in it's database. Just google for your camera model and sensor size. If the focal length isn't set you can also set it manually but you'll have to know what focal length you used.

Then just name your picture set something and add all the images.

NOTE: Do not move the images after you've added them or you will get an error trying to open the project. This can be fixed by opening the .r3d file in the project folder with notepad or some other text editor and finding and replacing the incorrect paths, but be warned.

Computing Matches

Now the Regard3D documentation, link below, goes more in depth into some of the options. I'm not going to go over everything, just cover some of the stuff it doesn't cover or what I learned worked best for me from experience.

Here the default settings work pretty well. I found on my laptop (specs at the end) setting keypoint sensitivity too high would cause it to crash (EDIT: this no longer happens on my new better desktop). Setting the keypoint matching ratio to high though and the keypoint sensitivity to low improved some of my results without crashing.

This can take a while, up to an hour for me at least (EDIT: Takes me 5-15 min on my new computer!).

Tree Structure

So at this point you'll notice the tree view in the sidebar has started branching out. Here's what a finished project looks like for example:

At any point you can go back and check the parameters you used, how much time it took, etc, and each level will give you different options depending on what stage you're on.

You can also export point clouds and models to other programs from here if that stage allows for it.

Are there enough matches?

If you click on your matches you should now see several options in the lower left:

If you click Show matching results... you'll get a dialog showing you the matches. At first you won't see anything different.

Check Show Keypoints to actually show the matches. Even then you might not quite see them. So to zoom in you can Open Preview Window and you should now be able to see a bunch of little circles around the ink splatters.

To see matches between pairs, in the lower half click Show Matches. It might take a second to load. And if you took your pictures right you should see just a bunch of lines, to the point you can't even see the images well.

Triangulation

Next you're going to want to triangulate these matches. Basically in photogrammetry there's two point clouds you need to create, a sparse and a dense point cloud. This will create the first.

Click Triangulation.

There's two options here, Incremental Structure from Motion and Global Structure from Motion.

I could not get the first to work, it just crashes (EDIT: This no longer happens to me on my new computer and it works better sometimes).

So I use Global.

As to the other options, some match a few more cameras than others, but they didn't make much of a difference.

This shouldn't take that long to compute, just a few minutes.

Finally you'll be able to see some points on the screen. If you load some other model and want to get back to this you can always just Show Triangulated Points.

You can also make the points bigger by moving the Point size slider in the top right. You should now be able to see a bunch of little green dots. Those are the cameras it captured. And in the lower left there's a field that tells you how many cameras were captured out of the total. Usually ~80/90% or more is enough.

Densification

From your triangulation click Create dense pointcloud....

Here you basically have two options CMVS/PMVS and MVE.

CMVS/PMVS

Use visibility information : Uncheck this if you don't have that many images (~70 is not many) can produce better results because it will use more cameras.

Levels : This is like the resolution. With a lower number being a higher resolution.

Threshold : Increasing this can help reduce artifacts.

Cell size : Related to the resolution, works similar to Level.

Min. image num: If a point only appeared in 2 images but this is set to 3 it won't use it, so I suggest lowering this to 2 for the amount of photos I recommended.

Now I prefer MVE because I could not get Level 1 to work for me, only Level 2 and it looks worse than the defaults for MVE which do work for me.

This one does take a lot less time though (couple of minutes). And it seems to produce nicer point clouds with less artifacts but the end model did not look as nice as with MVE.

BUT you loose the option later to do a Floating Surface Reconstruction.

MVE

Scale: The resolution with a lower number being a higher resolution.

The problem with MVE is that anything but the defaults seems to create a lot of weird artifacts and nothing but the defaults seemed to work.

It also takes a lot longer (2-3h) Edit: On my new computer it's now 10-30min. If your computer isn't very powerful you might get out of memory errors. Try closing all your programs and just leaving it to run for a while or overnight, sometimes it will recover and finish.

But it does allow you do do Floating Surface Reconstructions later.

The Dense Point Cloud

The view might lag quite a bit at this point. You should see something that looks like your object with a few artifacts close to the surface depending on what method you chose. As long as there isn't a large cloud of them, you can still get good results.

For my case MVE at defaults turned out the better result.

Creating the Surface

Click Create Surface.

We get the two options, one I already mentioned…

Floating Surface Reconstruction

Levels: Like the resolution except now a higher value = more resolution.

This one can take ~1h sometimes for Level 0 which is the lowest so I was not able to try it out much and am not 100% confident as to what some of the other parameters do. I do know though that if you get blobs floating around the model, turning Confidence Threshold and Minimum Component Size up a bit will help get rid of those artifacts.

Possion Surface Reconstruction

PS: Sorry for the mispronunciation in the video, I literally read this as Poison.

This is my preferred method.

Depth: Like the resolution except now a higher value = more resolution. Don't go too high (9-10) or you'll get a lot of artifacts.

Samples per Node: Turning this up helps get rid of artifacts.

As for the other two settings, the defaults work well, turning them up just seems to make the base a bit neater.

Colorization

As part of the surface reconstruction textures are created.

There used to be a bug with the Textures option, the newest version has fixed it.

Textures are more detailed since it will produce image textures, while Colored Vertices depends on the resolution of the mesh but it also a bit faster.

Now the bug is fixed I do not recommend Colored Vertices unless you don't care about the textures at all. unfortunately you can't preview the surface without the textures if you used Colored Vertices so it kind of negates that instance too.

If you use Textures you can toggle them off in the sidebar to the right.

Exporting

From here we'll need to export our model for cleanup in other programs. You can use either Meshlab, it's free (you can also do the surface reconstruction of point clouds from there) but it's very hard to understand and the newest version does not work for me, or Blender.

I could not record the cleanup because the mesh was so huge and freezing my computer, but at the end of the video I try to illustrate the basic steps I took with a simple sphere.

LINKS

Regard3D + Tutorial/Documentation

Meshlab (I was using 1.3.4BETA)

Blender

If your object is particularly small I recommend you look at this part of the tutorial I wrote on magic lantern (you don't need it to apply the concepts described but it's helpful if you have an DSLR camera).

PS: To give you an idea of the type how long it might take on your computer, or what type of computer you need, I'm using a laptop with an Intel i5, 8GB of RAM, and a NVIDIA 650M GPU.

Edit: And my new computer is a desktop with a Ryzen 1500x, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and an NVIDIA 1050Ti so you can see why it no longer struggles.