Auto Save Mode

This feature is great for recovering the project changes after an unexpected problem occurs with your PC and the RealityCapture process is interrupted. This feature can recover your prior changes such as placed GCP´s, computed models, textures, etc., should the process have successfully completed beforehand.

How to Activate Autosave mode:

Click on the Application settings found in the WORKFLOW tab
Select Yes in Auto Save mode setting

Where are autosave files saved

The first part of the autosave file(s) is saved to resource cache (we do not recommend using system temp as target cache location – this folder will require storage as with Auto Save mode enabled). The second part of the autosave files is saved to the project folder as "project_name".autosave.

Autosave saving period

Autosave creates a "project_name".autosave file after 30 seconds (currently cannot be changed) when a user makes any changes to a project. The file is located in the project folder.
However, when you select Align Images, Normal Detail reconstruction, or any other high computational feature, autosave will occur immediately (this overrides the 30 seconds interval).

In case of a new project, autosave will save only to the resource cache located in path:
C:\Users\”CurrentUser”\AppData\Local\Temp\RealityCapture or RealityCapture-1, RealityCapture-2 or RealityCapture-3 (Where RealityCapture = instance 1, RealityCapture-1 = instance 2 and so on)
In the event of a previously saved project, autosave will save to the path of that project with suffix project.autosave
When you next open your original project, you will see a dialog prompt asking whether you want to recover prior changes.

Select one of the options:

Press Recover to recover autosaved changes
Press Delete to delete the autosave
Press Ignore to ignore the autosave and open a project without these changes (autosave will be not deleted)

General Autosave Notes

If there are no changes to the project, a new autosave will not be created.
If the process is terminated midway through a large computation process (such as a texturing process), an autosave will be unable to recover any changes to that point. The autosave feature recovers only completed processes (except a reconstruction process - please read more about this in the "Continue Interrupted Model Calculation" section).

Continue Interrupted Model Calculation with Autosave

After enabling autosave you are also getting a new sub-feature which will autosave model parts when RealityCapture creates a model (reconstruction process). You will no longer lose all your already processed model parts after the unexpected closing of the app or other similar circumstances.

How incremental model reconstruction process works:

After one model part is created, RealityCapture will autosave (saves it to resource cache) that part 15 minutes after completing the processing of that model part. If RealityCapture process is interrupted after the successful model part save, you can continue the model calculation from that autosave point. After opening the project, an Autosave dialog window will appear. Click on Recover, select the model to be continued in calculation in 1Ds view and navigate to the bottom left corner to Continue model calculation and Click on Continue button. Reconstruction process will continue from prior Autosave point.

Example of a model situation

Open a RealityCapture project
Go to the Application settings and set Auto save mode to "Yes"
Create a normal/high detail reconstruction
Wait for "Creating model" part (you can check it in the RealityCapture console) and then wait a further 10 minutes in order to autosave that mesh part to resource cache (verify in the resource cache that one model part was created)
Quit RealityCapture process (End task) using Windows task manager
Open your RealityCapture project (.rcproj) where you want to recover Autosave again (if you have multiple instances opened, open it in the same instance as before)
Click on Recover
In 1Ds view, Click on the model you want to continue calculating (you will also see how many parts were recovered from the Autosave)
Click on Continue button
A progress bar Resuming model calculation will appear and after the initial caching process, you continue in the "Creating model" phase from the latest model part RealityCapture was able to autosave (phase approximately 15 minutes after the last model part was calculated)

NOTE: Using "Continue" in model calculation will create a new counter for the rest of the parts in the console - for instance, if you have a total of 555 parts and RealityCapture was able to autosave 500 parts in the console you will see “Processing part 1 / 55. Estimated 2265 vertices”. Instead of " Processing part 501 / 555".