USER MANUAL

• United Start Multiple Non-Textured button (Ctrl+F5) starts multiple registration and multiple finalization for selected scans. 

All the tools of Process group are covered in detail in Chapter 8: Post-processing of a Scan and Chapter 9: Assembling a 3D Model from Several Scans.

Shaded View can be toggled on and off (regardless of wireframe mode) in order to switch between smoothed and rugged representation of the mesh:

To hide a part of a model, use any selection tool to select a region to be hidden, and click Hide selected:

Hiding parts of a model may be done incrementally, step by step. After hiding certain parts, select next part and click Hide selected again — new area will be added to the already hidden one:

Doing so can give access to hard-to-reach areas for easier editing. For example, it helps remove this rough edge of this vase inner surface:

If nothing is selected on the model, the button Hide selected changes its shape and function to Show hidden — click it and all hidden surfaces will be shown again:

Tools of Points Priority group designed to mark some parts of data as support geometry without deleting them, but also without including them into a final model. Priority Mode is described in more detail in Chapter 8: Post-processing of a Scan and Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Assembling a 3D Model from Several Scans.

Depending on the post-processing stage and elements selected in the project list, different tools are displayed on the Side Toolbar. These tools help edit both point clouds (including separate frames) and polygonal results (textured or not). Some tools are available only if multiple elements are selected in a project tree.

Please do not forget about the Quick Help button. It shows what kind of actions are available in current mode or with a given tool:

Navigation tool helps move and rotate objects in the editing area. It works with all elements in the project tree. It can be activated by clicking the Navigation button on the Side Toolbar or by pressing V on a keyboard.

Also, Navigation tool can be temporarily activated by pressing and holding spacebar. It is convenient when using other tools — to rotate the object and continue editing.

Marquee Brush is a selection tool available when working with an untextured polygonal mesh. To use the tool, select it on the Side Toolbar or press M. 

Scroll the mouse wheel to change the size of the brush. Select the region of interest by left-clicking over it. To deselect a region, hold Ctrl when using the tool. If used with Shift, only markers will be selected. If used with Shift+Alt, both surface and markers will be selected. Press Ctrl+I to invert selection. Press Ctrl+D or Esc to cancel selection.

Marquee Brush is one-sided, meaning it only selects what is visible. If parts of a model are obscured by other parts — they will not be selected.

Also, by toggling Caps Lock, it is possible to switch between selection of only inner or only outer surfaces:

Marquee Double Side Brush is a selection tool available when working with a point cloud or an untextured polygonal mesh. To use the tool, select it on the Side Toolbar or press D.

Scroll the mouse wheel to change the size of the brush. Select the region of interest by left-clicking over it. To deselect a region, hold Ctrl when using the tool. If used with Shift, only markers will be selected. If used with Shift+Alt, both surface and markers will be selected. Press Ctrl+I to invert selection. Press Ctrl+D or Esc to cancel selection.

As opposed to One-sided Marquee Brush, this brush selects not only visible areas, but also all areas underneath:

Markers selection is done similar to the One-sided Marquee Brush, but all markers under the brush are selected, regardless of their visibility.

Polygonal Lasso is a selection tool available when working with point cloud or an untextured polygonal mesh. It works like Double-sided Marquee Brush, but the selection area is defined by drawing a polygon. To use the tool, select it on the Side Toolbar or press L.

To define a selection area, left-click on a point and move the mouse to another point and left-click again. Repeat until the area of interest is enclosed in a polygon. Right-click to finish selection. To deselect a region, hold Ctrl when using the tool. If used with Shift, only markers will be selected. If used with Shift+Alt, both surface and markers will be selected. Press Ctrl+I to invert selection. Press Ctrl+D or Esc to cancel selection.

Magic Wand is a selection tool available when working with an untextured polygonal mesh. It allows selection of separate mesh elements that aren't connected. To use the tool, select it on the Side Toolbar or press W.

Magic Wand may be particularly useful in combination with inversion of selection (Ctrl+I). Main object can be selected first, then selection can be inverted by pressing Ctrl+I. If no useful parts are selected after that — just press delete to remove all the needless elements of the mesh:

Same effect can be achieved with Filtering by Size tool (explained below), but keep in mind that the biggest element is not always the most important. Plus, the method described above allows visual control of elements marked for deletion (they will be selected first).

Curvature Selection tool allows to select certain areas of a model based on their curvature. This tool may be useful both for deleting needless parts or for leaving only specific parts of the model for further processing in third-party applications (e.g. for reverse engineering). To use the tool, select it on the Side Toolbar or press C.

Before curvature-based selection can be performed, it is necessary to set the Filter Size and to analyze the model.  Filter Size is a value from 2 to 10 that determines the sensitivity of the tool to changes in curvature. The higher the value, the lower the sensitivity of the tool to local curvature differences. After Filter Size is set, click Calculate Mean Curvature to begin the analysis:

After the analysis is complete, the model will be presented as a color map of curvature changes. Smooth and subtle changes in curvature are marked displayed in green, medium-level curvature changes are displayed in blue, and the most significant changes in curvature are displayed in red. Set a Selection Tolerance, click Pick a Point button and choose the point on the area needed to be selected.

Adjust Selection Tolerance in such a way that the area of interest is selected as fully as possible, but without selecting adjacent areas:

After optimal values of Filter Size and Selection Tolerance are found, click Accept Changes or press Ctrl+F:

After that, it is possible, for example, to invert selection (Ctrl+I) and delete needless data to save only required part of the model:

Cut is a tool for deleting parts of point clouds and untextured polygonal models. Select needless parts using any selection tool and then pick the tool on the Side Bar or press Delete. Take note that if there is no selection, the tool will be inactive. 

Cut on Frames is a tool that not only deletes the parts of a polygonal model (as Cut tool does), but it also deletes corresponding areas of the underlying point cloud. This tool is only active on results with frames and will not be available on point clouds, standalone models and results of multiple scans.

To use the tool, select a part of a scan result and click Cut on Frames on the Side Bar, or press Shift+Delete.

The selected areas are cut not only from the result, but also from the point cloud. Take note that some points can remain on the point cloud, because they might not have been used for building a model (e.g. noise if preliminary cleaning has been disabled during post-processing).

Also, it is important to remember that editing point clouds can negatively affect registration algorithms, especially when assembling the final model out of several scans. Therefore, it is generally recommended to mark these areas as support geometry instead of deleting them. It is achieved with Priority Mode, described in more detail in Chapter 9: Assembling a 3D Model.

Bridge tool allows to create a thin polygonal sliver, connecting two sides of a hole. It helps segment big holes, making filling them faster. In many cases it also allows to better preserve topology and geometry of a model. To add a bridge, click Bridge on the Side Toolbar or press B.

Pick two points on either side of a hole. To pick a point — just double-click on it.  When finished, click Accept Changes to create a bridge:

Now the hole has two segments that can be filled separately. In many cases it leads to better results. Plus, oftentimes, some segments may simply be left unfilled. It all depends on the final goal.

If needed, each of these segments can be further segmented into even smaller ones using the same approach.

Fill Selected Holes shows regions where data is missing and allows to fill those regions with interpolated data. Simply put, it uses the edge of a hole to reconstruct the data in a missing area. This tool is for untextured polygonal meshes only. To use the tool, click on it on the Side Toolbar or press F.

The tool will show a list of holes sorted by size — the biggest on top. In the editing area all holes will be mark with bright green contours. Holes to fill can be picked either from the list or directly on the model. Selected holes are shown both on the list and on the model (with bright blue). When the mouse pointer hoveres over the edge of a hole, its contour changes color to red. Left-click to select the hole. Left-click again to deselect it.

 It is also possible to press Ctrl+A to select all holes. After holes to be filled are selected, click Accept Changes or press Ctrl+F to fill them:

Hole filling algorithms work well on relatively small holes with clean edges. But as the size of holes increases, the possibility of filling errors also goes up. It is especially true if a substantial part of a surface is missing and the geometry of it is complex. In such cases it is preferable to make additional scan of such areas and fuze it with existing data.

If a model has too many small holes (hundreds), most likely hole filling was deactivated in finalization settings or the radius of auto-filled holes is too small. These small holes can be filled both during finalization or with this hole-filling tool after finalization is complete.

It is usually a good idea to first fill the smallest holes (the bottom part of the list) and leave 10-20 biggest holes on top of the list unfilled. Chances are that big holes will be filled with artifacts and it is better either not to fill them at all or segment them first using bridges.

Smooth is a tool used to make a rough polygonal surface more even and less grainy. It may prove useful with noisy low-quality scans or if the surface of the object is indeed uneven or dirty.

Often the Smooth tool not only makes the surface more appealing, but also makes it easier to process the model in downstream applications (e.g. during regioning for reverse engineering). But overuse of the tool may cause some details to be lost.

Pick the tool on the Side Toolbar or press S.

Set the size of the smoothing brush by scrolling the mouse wheel. Left-click the area needed to be smoothed. Moving the brush over the area while holding left mouse button or repeating left clicks makes the area gradually more smooth. After the desired result is achieved, click Accept Changes or press Ctrl+F:

It is also possible to smooth the entire model by holding Shift key when using the tool. To smooth isolated part of a model, keep Alt pressed instead.

Filtering by Size is a tool that helps quickly remove small needless leftovers that may show up on the final model if no filtering was performed during registration, or after assembling the final result out of several separate scans. Chances are that these little pieces have nothing to do with the object itself and can be safely deleted.

To run Filtering by Size pick the tool on the Side Toolbar or press Alt+F. Specify filtering method. Leave the biggest part just removes everything except the biggest segment of the model. Remove parts smaller than removes all the fragments that are smaller than the threshold specified:

Before using Leave the biggest part option it is a good idea to visually check if the main object is indeed the biggest. Often, the surface on which a part was scanned may be bigger than the scanned object itself. In such a case, only the underlying surface will remain and everything else, including the useful object, will be deleted:

Simplify tool reduces amount of triangles a polygonal model consists of. The degree of simplification can be set either as a percentage of the initial amount of triangles or as a specific number of them.

To simplify a model, click the tool on the Side Toolbar and choose the degree of simplification. The percentage value here states what percent of initial number of polygons will be used to build a simplified model.  Mark Absolute checkbox to set a specific amount of polygons directly (the real amount of polygons used will be a bit smaller).

The tool can also be run by pressing Alt+S, but no settings window will be shown and last used settings will be applied. 

The main difference of the Simplify tool in comparison with the Remesh tool is the adaptive nature of simplification: during simplification the polygonal grid stays denser on corners, bends and other areas of high curvature to better preserve their details, whereas on more smooth and flat areas the density of the grid is reduced.

To define a cutting plane using a line, press "Define Section" button and draw a line. Hold Shift to keep the line vertical, horizontal or diagonal. 

To define a cutting plane using the three-points method, click Pick 3 Points button and select three points on the surface of a model:

Cutting plane can also be defined using Curvature Selection tool described above: to do so, click Curvature Selection in Section tool, set Filter Size, analyze the model (Calculate Mean Curvature button), pick a point on the model and adjust Selection Tolerance until selection is optimal. Click Fit a Plane to calculate the average plane for selected area.

Cutting plane divides a model into active and hidden parts. Click Invert Plane Normal Direction to swap them if needed:

By changing Shift value it is possible to move the cutting plane up and down relative to its initial position. The value is in millimeters and can be either typed in or changed by scrolling the mouse wheel while hovering the mouse over the input field:

Press Cut button to delete the hidden part of a model. If Cut Source Frames checkbox is selected, the corresponding part of data will also be removed from the point cloud.

Section tool also allows to add a base to a model. It can be handy when 3D printing human or statue scans. Set a cutting plane and select the Basement checkbox. Set pedestal parameters: how many corners it will have and how thick and big it will be. While setting these parameters, the preview will be shown in red. Click Apply when the result is acceptable.

When making a base, it is important for the cutting profile to be watertight. If a profile has gaps, it will not be possible to make a base, and the Basement checkbox will be grayed out. In such a case, define another cutting plane or move current cutting plane by changing Shift value:

Also, any cutting profile can be selected and saved for further use in downstream applications. When a profile is selected, the Section panel shows info on whether the profile is watertight or not, and shows information on its length and area:

To save a cutting profile, left-click it and click the Export button. Specify a file name and choose file format: .svg or .dxf.

Choose the initial point by clicking Pick Source Point button. The analysis of a model will begin and after it is complete, the model will be shown as a color map of distances from the point specified. Areas closest to the source point are shown in blue. The most distant areas are shown in red. Hover the mouse over the model to see the distance (in millimeters).

To draw a trajectory from Source Point to Destination Point, click Pick Destination Point button and choose a second point. Shortest path will be shown as a black curve with numeric distance value in millimeters. 

To export the curve, click Export button and specify path and name for a file. The file will be saved in .dxf format.

Calibry Nest has several tools for editing texture. These tools are available on the Side Toolbar when a texturized result is selected:

Adjust Texture helps change brightness and contrast of a texture atlas, plus edit the color balance for each of three base colors. To use the tool, select texturized result and click "Adjust Texture" on the Side Toolbar. Change the values until the optimal result is achieved and click OK to accept or Cancel to reset the changes. 

Luminosity Brush help change brightness locally in certain areas (either increase or decrease). 

Define the size of the brush by scrolling the mouse wheel. Left-click and move to increase the brightness locally. To darken the area, use the tool with Ctrl pressed.

Magic Clone Stamp helps edit texturing defects by replacing the area under the brush with nearby texture. To use the tool, select a textured result, and click the tool on the Side Toolbar. 

Set the size of the brush by scrolling the mouse wheel while holding Ctrl. Select a texturized region with a defect or blemish to replace it with the adjacent texture. To select a region, hold Ctrl. 

In the same way the markers can be removed from the texture: 

Keep in mind that this tool uses nearby texture to replace the texture under the brush, therefore artifacts may appear when this tool is used on vibrant texture or on texture with lots of colored lines.