SFM (structure For Motion)

[BenThereFraggedThat]

I was talking to my coworker today and part of what we do is mass photo collection of reefs for structure for motion where we can analyze how much or little the reef has grown over the time frame between sequences. I was joking about doing it with my reef tank and she said she would 100% be able to process it and turn my reef into a 3D model and I could do it once a year to analyze the growth trends. I was just wondering if anyone did this or knew if it had every been done in reef tanks whether personal or commercial?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I've not seen anyone do it, but it certainly seems doable and interesting, especially for SPS corals.

One complication will be organisms that move, either with flow (such as soft corals) or by relocating themselves (anemones, etc.).

Another complication is changes in inflation and/or polyp extension may look like growth.

 

[BenThereFraggedThat]

I've not seen anyone do it, but it certainly seems doable and interesting, especially for SPS corals.

One complication will be organisms that move, either with flow (such as soft corals) or by relocating themselves (anemones, etc.).

Another complication is changes in inflation and/or polyp extension may look like growth.

That is true. We do this a lot on actual reefs and for example, the gorgonians and reef fish and things like that haven't really been an issue with flow and such simply due to taking well over 100,000 pictures in just a day to overlay them all. What may have been in one isn't in the other, so the processing software overlays all of the pics and then extrapolates the size based on all of them in relation of known control targets laid out across the reef. The part I haven't considered which you brought up is the corals such as torches or hammers because more all of what we do in in the Caribbean so I'd have to check and see what kind of effect it would have.