Preparation

Prerequisites

Before getting started, let us review some prerequisites to ensure that everything is ready.

For recording your first volumetric video with ScannedReality Studio, you will need a PC that fulfills the hardware requirements and one or more cameras which are supported by ScannedReality Studio.

If you would like to use more than a single camera, then you will also need a calibration pattern in order to calibrate the camera positions. If you do not have one yet, it is simple to create one using a printer, a piece of cardboard, and some glue. Please see here for instructions.

For license activation, your PC will need an Internet connection.

Installation

If you have not installed ScannedReality studio yet, then this is the first step to be done. See the installation instructions here.

License activation

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Starting the program for the first time, you will need to enter your ScannedReality account details in order to activate your license on your PC.

An Internet connection is required for this step.

Note

After the license has been activated, the program may be used for up to two weeks without an Internet connection. For paid subscriptions, an Internet connection is required to update the license once a new subscription period begins.

Initial workspace setup

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If you just started the program for the first time, then there is one more initial setup step to complete: Creating an initial workspace.

A workspace is a directory in your file system where the recorded data and processed results will be saved. For recording to work well, please choose a directory on a sufficiently fast disk (considering the hardware requirements).

You may optionally adjust the name of the workspace that will be created. All workspace details can still be changed later in the settings tab.

After you selected a path and chose a name, click “Create workspace”.

Hint

Workspace names allow distinguishing multiple workspaces that you may define later. Having multiple workspaces may be useful to record to different disks or to organize recordings in different locations in the file system.

User interface: Home screen

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After going through the initial setup steps, or when restarting the program later, you will start at the home screen. Let us have a brief look at it.

On the top, there is a tab bar providing quick access to the main components of the program. The highlighted “Home” tab on the left is where you are now. Next to it are the following:

  • Settings: Allows changing program settings, such as the workspace or microphone configuration.

  • About: Shows legal notices for the licenses of third-party software components.

The next group of three tabs allows accessing the main functionality of the program:

  • Record: Provides quick access to the record screen where videos and snapshots can be recorded.

  • Manage & Process: Provides access to all recordings and reconstructions in your workspaces, similarly to a file manager. From there, you may for example inspect recordings, process them to create reconstructions, or open reconstructions.

  • View & Edit: Allows to open reconstruction files, view them, and offers some editing possibilities for them.

Finally, on the top right, there is the sensor status button which currently reads “No sensors active”:

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This button displays the state of the connected sensors (cameras and microphones): Right now, no sensors are running. While the program uses any sensors, it displays the number of active sensors there, and the color of the text indicates whether everything is okay (green) or whether the program has detected an issue with the sensors (other colors).

Clicking the sensor status button while the sensors are active shows a window with additional information about the sensors. For example, the camera firmware versions and the actual achieved camera frames-per-second (which may differ from the configured frames-per-second) can be found there.

The small button on the right of the sensor status button, which currently shows a “play” icon, allows starting and stopping the sensors manually. At the moment, we do not need this, since going through the recording setup will start the sensors automatically.

So much for an overview of the main user interface. We will continue by going through the guided recording setup.