Images for underwater 3D reconstruction of Posidonia seagrass transplantation site
Description
The photographic data, which are the first step for data processing, were acquired with a low-cost action camera (GoPro Hero 9) capable of shooting high quality (20 Mpix images) photos with a specific time-lapse function. To perform the acquisition over a large area (3200 m2) the camera was mounted on a Diver Propulsion Vehicle (DPV) which allowed the SCUBA diver to map the entire area in only 1h and 10’. Consecutive (2 seconds interval) photos were acquired in raw format to allow further manual editing aimed at improving the result via colour grading and correction. Subsequently, each image was processed in a photogrammetric software (Agisoft Metashape) based on Structure from Motion (SfM) processing algorithms to generate 2D raster outputs (orthophoto mosaics and Digital Elevation Models, DEM),3D dense point clouds and 3D triangular mesh with texture. Finally, the open-source software Blender 2.93 was used to render the 3D scene to create a realistic view of the transplanted area by adding water effects and Posidonia leaves that otherwise cannot be well reproduced by only SfM data.