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RealityScan 2.1.1 is a maintenance release, but a practical one. Epic updates COLMAP exchange, adds new XMP with image list export options, cleans up mask export, and fixes a long list of editor, alignment, and CLI issues.

The post RealityScan 2.1.1 adds better COLMAP support and new XMP export options first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

]]> A detailed, colorful 3D block is displayed against a grid background, featuring various labeled sections in vibrant hues of blue, yellow, red, and orange. Each area is distinctly marked with letters and numbers, creating a complex, geometric map that invites exploration.

For those who do not know the tool, RealityScan is Epic’s photogrammetry application for reconstructing 3D assets, scenes, and datasets from photographs and scans. It is used in areas such as VFX, game development, visualization, heritage capture, and geospatial workflows. RealityScan 2.1, the previous major release, added broader automation options, support for SLAM data, and other workflow extensions, so 2.1.1 reads very much like the expected follow-up pass: less about headline features, more about making interchange and export behave properly when real projects get involved.

RealityScan 2.1.1 is now available, and while this is not the kind of release that arrives with fireworks and a new category of buzzword, it does address several parts of the workflow that tend to matter once scans actually have to leave the application and survive contact with the rest of production.

The most relevant improvements are in the COLMAP pipeline. RealityScan 2.1.1 now exports either to a flat folder structure or to the standard COLMAP directory layout, supports both binary and ASCII export, improves mask export behavior, and filters low-accuracy points automatically during export. On import, Epic has added support for the FULL_OPENCV camera model, which should make it easier to bring in a wider range of calibration data without extra cleanup elsewhere in the chain.

Mask handling is one of the more useful practical changes here. The exporter now supports AI-generated masks, and users can choose whether to keep the .mask.ext suffix when exporting into the standard COLMAP directory structure. Epic also lists fixes for cases where selected mask layers failed to export, along with corrections for quality degradation when exporting COLMAP data based on original distorted images. That is the sort of update that sounds small in a changelog and rather less small when it breaks a handoff.

Another addition is the new “RealityScan XMPs with Image List” export in the Registration exports. This makes it possible to export XMPs corresponding either to the original distorted images or to undistorted images, and to choose between the “local:1 Euclidean” and “Grid plane” coordinate systems. At the same time, Epic has removed the separate Image list export from the Alignment tab, because the same function already existed in Registration export. Exported image lists now use the .imagelist extension, which can be reused when importing inputs or input selections back into RealityScan.

There are also smaller but welcome naming and consistency changes. Texture layer names now respect the specified name, including when selecting layers for texturing. Epic also removed some extra information from those names, including 16-bit and HDR prefixes, and adjusted numbering. On the command line side, importColmap becomes loadColmap, importBundler becomes loadBundler, and importFlightLog becomes importTrajectory. Not glamorous, but coherent. That alone can save someone a mildly irritating half-hour that could be spent watching cat videos.

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The fixed-issues section is long, and in this case that is probably good news. Epic lists corrections for an incorrect “model is already colorized” warning on certain LiDAR models, ignored intrinsic parameters during flight log imports, EXR import issues, misplaced imported masks, raster artifacts in depth and mask exports, black mask exports in some cases, crashes related to LOD export settings and long computations, scene transformations being incorrectly retained after COLMAP and Bundler imports, and support for importing PLY files generated by the CGAL library. There are also multiple fixes for export behavior in cameras, orthographic projections, LAS classifications, contour export, and Nira upload handling.

Epic Games documentation for RealityScan 2.1.1

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The post RealityScan 2.1.1 adds better COLMAP support and new XMP export options first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

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