Point clouds, Gaussian splats and BIM in one scene – Bert Azizoglu, NUBIGON

0:00Michal Gula: you, you told me yesterday that the INTERGEO is, like, your first trade show ever.

0:05Bert Azizoglu: As a booth, yeah.

0:06Michal Gula: As, as a booth, yeah.

0:06Bert Azizoglu: Yeah.

0:08Michal Gula: How do you feel about it?

0:10Bert Azizoglu: It's good. I would say it's a very, very different experience than just coming as a visitor. And, obviously, when you have a booth, you know, people that are interested in your application know where to go. and it's a good opportunity to have, you know, a whole, like, a broader spectrum of people that you can talk to.

0:29Michal Gula: I'm, I'm sure, like, the ev- evaluation of, of this visit will be done, like, afterwards, but, like, your first impressions, like, do you feel like you are getting more when you are going through the booths and speaking to people, or when you actually have your own booth in?

0:49Bert Azizoglu: So for our application, it's int- it's reasonable for both scenarios because when I'm go- coming as a visitor, I always go to m- my clients that use our application and showcase their own projects, or devices. so it's good to see what our users are doing with our application, and, you know, connect with them. but obviously, you know, it's a different, perspective when our users come to us or potential users- come to our booth. but yeah, it's, it's good to have a booth overall, I would say.

1:23Tomáš Barnáš: We had a great, discussion yesterday just on the end when no- nobody else was there, and it was... They just mentioned that, yeah, when you are alone, it's super complicated. And I know it also. Like, we did it also many times. You have a little booth, and then you think like, "Okay, I will be there sometimes. Sometimes I go to talk to people." And then you figure out that actually you don't even have time to go for- to the toilet because you have constantly someone coming, and if you're alone, you're just standing there, like, 10 hours a day, and then... and trying to showcase your product.

1:53Bert Azizoglu: I, I mean, it's, it's interesting because we-- there was a lot of people who obviously are active users of our application. there were users that, you know, were previously active but hadn't... you know, weren't really up to date on the application. and then obviously, new people, that are, you know, curious about it, as well as potential partners. So you get like a-- I think you get to speak to a broader spectrum of people when you have a booth. when you're visiting booths, then you obviously talk to the people who are at the booth. Oftentimes, you know, salespeople, or, you know, if you're lucky, you get executives.

2:30Michal Gula: Bert Azizoglu from NUBIGON is our guest. my claim is, 2D is against my religion. NUBIGON is a, is a software, a piece of, of, magic, which can help you deliver video renders, which might be in a conflict with my claim. But, you are primarily working with 3D assets.

2:54Bert Azizoglu: Absolutely, yeah.

2:55Michal Gula: So, so, I think it's okay to have you here. can you just, like, quickly describe, like, who is your client and maybe more important thing, like, why?

3:07Bert Azizoglu: So primarily, we work with people that are, interested about expanding the reach of 3D reality capture. so we work-- typ- it's typically service providers. there's scanning professionals or, you know, pretty much anyone involved in capturing the reality and deriving assets from it. where we come in is the, the interface between them and their audience and their clients. Because the world out there, you know, knows maybe on certain occasions about t- reality capture, but most people have no clue. And to ease that conversation between our clients and the wider world, that's where we come in with a helpful solution. And, you know, speaking to your introduction, I think we're all, we're all about making 3D reality capture more popular. obviously, you know, the current communication platforms don't necessarily allow for a 3D experience, like on social media, so video is a important medium. But-

4:09Michal Gula: Right

4:10Bert Azizoglu: you know, we'll do whatever it takes to expand the reach of reality capture. That's our basic high-level, mission.

4:17Michal Gula: The, the second part of the question was why.

4:20Bert Azizoglu: Why? Well, why? It, it's because anything-- When we engage with our clients on a day-to-day basis, every conversation triggers an important realization about how important it is or what potential it, you know, yields. It could yield. And, you know, we were talking about, y- we were talking, about, the potential of sun exposure analysis, for example. Architects currently do it based on models, right? But what about buildings that already are built? Like, if we are analyzing how hot it gets, how much sun a building façade gets. That's all great when you're working with a new development and the architect, you know, develops the design from scratch. But there are way more, way m- way more many, buildings out there that have already been built but have not been analyzed from that vantage point. And I think reality capture has an important role to play in that, in that context.

5:24Tomáš Barnáš: Now we see here many companies, like, trying to, have or build or, or building the, the powerful web viewers. what was your, like, idea behind to keep it offl- or, like, keep it, like, powered mainly on the PC and not being, like, a platform or application online?

5:43Bert Azizoglu: Well, there are obviously some technical considerations. but I should say that we are, working on an online application. it-- we were kind of waiting for a, a viable infrastructure to emerge so that we can deliver the same quality that we can deliver offline also on an online platform. So that's coming up, but, you know, I'll leave it at that. but I think the primary focus was not necessarily to be another viewer, but rather to kind of have a clear mission, in terms of how we wanna position ourselves and what we wanna communicate. And I think the mission that we have currently to, you know, allow our users to communicate their services and, or their products to the wider audiences, I think is very much in line with how our product is currently set up. we also have a lot of clients that, you know, do critical infrastructure or, you know, have certain, security, considerations that actually, you know, prefer and there have been-- where they prefer to have the data, offline. But it's not necessarily something that, we, you know, focus on. Our-- we just try to develop a solution that kind of is derived from the strategy or from- from the general mission, rather than having a technology and then finding a mission for it.

7:09Michal Gula: You already mentioned the sun and shadow analysis- which to me it's saying that you are trying to move from like, marketing only focus to actually delivering some, value and decision-making in the, in the process of- of working with the data. do you see any, any other applications where your renders are not used for social media and for- for marketing side of the thing- but actually for the decision making, like beside the- the sun and shadows?

7:45Bert Azizoglu: Well, our-- one of our primary strengths is also having hybrid scenes. So you can bring in all kinds of different reality capture assets from point clouds, Gaussian splats, different types of meshes, CAD models, BIM models. And once you collect them all in one scene, then you actually have a great way of validating all those different assets against each other and, you know, using the strengths mutually. So if you have-- You know, the point cloud delivers the s- spatial accuracy, the Gaussian splats provide some photorealism. The BIM model obviously is the, you know, is the ultimate deliverable, and having them all in one scene allows you to kind of contrast them with each other or, you know, complement-- and see how they are complementary to each other. I think that's currently the, you know, good, value, and it also validates the quality of each other. So if you are doing ex- feature extraction work, and you show the extracted model or the drawing together with the point cloud, people have more confidence in it.

8:46Michal Gula: What's the-

8:47Bert Azizoglu: Yeah. go ahead.

8:48Tomáš Barnáš: I- I just wanted to emphasize one because we already left that question. But, when I was asking my previous one, I w- I was targeting exactly to the, like, safety and data protection, which is very powerful if you keep it, like, on site. And, you mentioned also that there can be like, like a military use or, or other clients. So I think this is very important to- to even just to say it stronger that, compared to like other safety issues with an online stuff, you have like a huge benefit in that. So just wanted to make this obvious.

9:18Bert Azizoglu: Yeah. I mean, public safety is a huge component for us, and we've had quite a bit of traction in that regard. And, you know, it's-- we, we don't see the data. So, you know, data hosting is entirely currently sitting on the, on the client side. So whatever the infrastructure they have, you know, it- it doesn't add another layer of security concern for them.

9:43Michal Gula: Scanning business is interesting in terms of that you can scan from very small things up to large cities or maybe entire planet. what is your, like, like favorite use case? Like, c- can you just imagine the-- your top project that you have seen and what it was? Of course, rendered with NUBIGON.

10:07Bert Azizoglu: So I typically like projects that provide context because when we see a lot of, individual, you know, developments in architectural rendering or, you know, anything of that kind, it typically is in a vacuum. You know, it's presented as, as if it was in a vacuum. You know, all the surroundings are kind of like fading and in-- and we live in a built environment, and especially in Europe, you know, most of the buildings are already there. most of the construction work is done, in and around, existing faci- buildings or, you know, geography. so I think the, the strength of reality capture comes from providing context to whatever we do. so any project that has, you know, in a city s- setting, for example. If there's a new project i- coming up, you know, placing that design into its context, that is captured with, one way or another. Actually, one of the first videos you made, was, a- a- a design project that was in a, in a city in, I think, Czech Republic, I presume, or Slovakia, and, it provided like the landscape on the-- in the-- on the hills. It provided the- the buildings around it. Overall, you know, that what's, I think, delivering the intelligence that people seek because, you know, designs are not made in a vacuum, and-

11:28Michal Gula: That- that was-

11:29Bert Azizoglu: they affect the environment.

11:30Michal Gula: That was the point because back then we were using, well, the, the drone photogrammetry for, for the context. We, we were having, of course, accessible some Google, Earth data. we were doing laser scanning of inside. We had the BIM documentation. We had some drawings. But when you are deli- delivering this project to the client, like he rarely sees everything. A typical situation is that, they will receive the data they will say, "Yeah, it's okay." And then after the six months, they will get back to you, "Oh, can you share it with us again, please, because the link is not working anymore?" So they never look at the data right away.

12:09Bert Azizoglu: Yeah.

12:09Michal Gula: and this is a typical situation. So, this is also my messaging always. When I create some content about it in the g- in the beginning, almost always my messaging is li- like, "Do this, guys." Like, th- this is the easiest marketing way how to, how to leverage what you have already created. And if, if you do a nice 30 seconds render, your client will want to see it, will want to show it to anybody else, and this is a free marketing.

12:35Bert Azizoglu: Absolutely. And it's, you know, probably even beyond marketing because oftentimes the decision-makers are not technical people.

12:42Michal Gula: Yeah.

12:42Bert Azizoglu: So even if the employees look at the data, the decision-makers rarely look at the data.

12:46Michal Gula: Yeah.

12:46Bert Azizoglu: and I was talking to a client yesterday. He was saying that he made a, a presentation to, to the board of a company, you know, six people. None of them have any idea about the project, but, you know, he's pitching the results. So, you know, in that scenario, you do want a, you know, quick and easy, teaser video-

13:04Michal Gula: Mm

13:04Bert Azizoglu: that gives them an initial insight on the, on the, on the material.

13:08Tomáš Barnáš: This is exactly the point. Like, I, I also would just pivot it away from saying, like, "Marketing, marketing, marketing," because that's a nice use case. But on the end, we have also a lot of cases when you are doing something for the client, delivering a project, whether it's, like, for future prototyping or copying something what exist and, reproducing it. most of the time those people which need it, they don't have the softwares, they don't know to work with the data. They just need th- this data to deliver it to a person who produce it further, and they are just, like, step in between, and they want to just see that, "Yes, I confirm it's correct," but there is no other way than visual. So-

13:45Bert Azizoglu: Yeah

13:45Tomáš Barnáš: yeah. It's actually for me also like a delivering tool, not only a marketing.

13:51Michal Gula: What's your change- challenge for the next year, let's say? you already mentioned the, the web viewer. I- is this something you are, like, most heavily working on, or?

14:02Bert Azizoglu: So it's, it's a two-track situation right now. We have the, the online viewer, on the, on the pipe- in the pipeline, as well as, more advanced kind of sun exposure analysis. so hopefully, we'll be implementing the nighttime, renderings as well. So-

14:18Michal Gula: What was the trigger for that? Like, why did you pick, to do the sun analysis?

14:24Bert Azizoglu: And this goes back to what I said earlier about context.

14:26Michal Gula: Okay.

14:27Bert Azizoglu: So reality capture provides context, but when you do reality capture, you only capture at one moment in time.

14:35Michal Gula: Yeah.

14:35Bert Azizoglu: But buildings don't, you know, stay like that at all times. So you wanna see how it actually changes over time. So it kind- Evolved organically. You know, we were getting, you know, we were obviously push, trying to push how, you know, the, the frontier of how well we can display reality capture data. And obviously we were adding, you know, all these, technologies like physically based rendering, ambient occlusion, tone mapping, et cetera. And at some point, you know, the question emerged, okay, you know, what is there... what, what else is there to, you know, provide more context to it and how we can, how can we make reality capture look more real rather than, you know, one static kind of synthetic display. and in conjunction with this whole topic on how architects work with sun and, sun and shadow analysis based on models, and barely anyone uses reality capture data for that, we saw an opportunity there, and it seems like, you know, it's, it's gaining a lot of traction. so another thing that we are building on top of that is the sun exposure mapping. So you, you'll actually have quantified, surface information, about, you know, how much sun each surface, of your, site gets, and that's hopefully gonna allow for some technical analysis as well.

16:00Michal Gula: Perfect. Thank you very much for coming to our episode or our podcast.

16:05Bert Azizoglu: My pleasure, guys.

16:05Michal Gula: Yeah.