[HN Gopher] Apple's Cubify Anything: Scaling Indoor 3D Object De...
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       Apple's Cubify Anything: Scaling Indoor 3D Object Detection
        
       Author : Tycho87
       Score  : 183 points
       Date   : 2025-03-31 08:25 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | desertmonad wrote:
       | Looks promising but the license, Attribution-NonCommercial-
       | NoDerivatives is pretty limiting..
        
         | huxley wrote:
         | That's just for the data, isn't it, the code is Apple Sample
         | Code License which I seem to recall is an MIT type license
        
           | pzo wrote:
           | "models are released under Apple ML Research Model Terms of
           | Use."
        
       | syntaxing wrote:
       | Surprised this isn't in coreML. Seems useful for the Vision Pro
       | or something
        
         | hokumguru wrote:
         | Might see it at WWDC this year?
        
       | fidotron wrote:
       | The accuracy of the results don't seem that great. For example,
       | looking at the pictures on the wall in their sample, or the beams
       | in the ceiling.
       | 
       | It's possible it's some artifact of the processing resolution,
       | but I think most people that have worked with NNs for AR input
       | will be surprised that this is not considered disappointing.
        
         | ellisv wrote:
         | > The accuracy of the results don't seem that great. For
         | example, looking at the pictures on the wall in their sample,
         | or the beams in the ceiling.
         | 
         | Do you mean the accuracy of the classification or the precision
         | of the lidar scans?
         | 
         | In my experience the lidar precision on the iPhones is decent
         | but not great, so the texture mapping can look a bit off at
         | times.
         | 
         | I'd love to have these bounding boxes on my scans though.
        
           | fidotron wrote:
           | I mean the accuracy with which it's locating the bounds. What
           | is extra curious is it obviously supports rotated cubes, yet
           | it often doesn't use them when it should, leading to
           | overstating the bounds, as if it's over enthusiastically
           | trying to put things aligned to some inferred axis.
           | 
           | This is obviously an attempt at the general case to apply
           | cubes to anything, but what is disappointing is the
           | performance on boxy objects is lower than I've seen on
           | private NNs used for AR and CV for years (ironically enough
           | on iPads), using just rgb and no depth.
           | 
           | I half think the exercise here was to establish if
           | transformers were the way to go for this, and on the strength
           | of that the answer would be probably not.
        
       | pablogancharov wrote:
       | In case anyone is interested in rendering USDZ scans in Three.js,
       | I created a demo: https://usdz-threejs-viewer.vercel.app/
        
         | mhuffman wrote:
         | Very nice and smooth! Do you have source for your demo?
        
           | callumprentice wrote:
           | There is one in the Three.JS example suite with source:
           | 
           | https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_loader_usdz.html
        
       | callumprentice wrote:
       | I keep meaning to get back to my suite of equirectangular image
       | functions - viewers, editors, authoring etc. and this reminded me
       | to resurrect the Viewer.
       | 
       | https://equinaut.surge.sh/?eqr=https://raw.githubusercontent...
       | 
       | Not quite right I think because the source image issn't 2x1
       | aspect ratio.
       | 
       | They can look really nice: both in the real world -
       | https://equinaut.surge.sh/?eqr=https://upload.wikimedia.org/...
       | 
       | or
       | 
       | the virtual world:
       | https://equinaut.surge.sh/?eqr=https://live.staticflickr.com...
        
       | Svip wrote:
       | Will it work on a picture of a Power Mac G4 Cube[0]? Whenever I
       | see "cube" and "apple" together (which, in fairness, is rare), I
       | think of the Cube.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G4_Cube
        
       | pzo wrote:
       | They overcomplicate by using 3-4 different (sub) license in one
       | project:
       | 
       | in README:
       | 
       | Licenses - The sample code is released under Apple Sample Code
       | License.
       | 
       | - The data is released under CC-by-NC-ND.
       | 
       | - The models are released under Apple ML Research Model Terms of
       | Use.
       | 
       | Acknowledgements
       | 
       | - We use and acknowledge contributions from multiple open-source
       | projects in ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS."
       | 
       | then having in github license button "Copyright (C) 2025 Apple
       | Inc. All Rights Reserved."
       | 
       | in repo file LICENSE LICENSE_MODEL
       | 
       | why making it so confusing and elaborate? Its so useless to even
       | use by 3rd party devs for making apps and releasing on their
       | platform. So then just make it one license with the most strict
       | restrictions you can make AGPL and/or CC-by-NC-ND .
        
         | brookst wrote:
         | They could have transformed it from insane to sublime by
         | slapping a highly restrictive license on the readme itself.
         | Seriously missed opportunity.
        
         | guipsp wrote:
         | It complicated, but it's not overcomplicated. CC is not
         | adequate for code and I belive that none of the code is GPL so
         | your suggestion regarding AGPL is strange.
        
           | generalizations wrote:
           | Why isn't CC-by-NC-ND adequate for code? Kinda makes sense
           | IMO and the summary looks useful?
           | 
           | > CC-BY-NC-ND is a type of Creative Commons license that
           | allows others to use a work non-commercially, but they cannot
           | modify it or create derivative works. This means the original
           | work can be shared, but it must remain unchanged and cannot
           | be used for commercial purposes.
           | 
           | Notwithstanding it's only applied to the data in this case,
           | it sure looks like a useful license for code.
        
             | tpmoney wrote:
             | > Why isn't CC-by-NC-ND adequate for code? Kinda makes
             | sense IMO and the summary looks useful?
             | 
             | Because the Creative Commons folks themselves say it's not
             | because it doesn't cover a number of software specific edge
             | cases.
        
       | totetsu wrote:
       | Is this so your smart speaker can better report whats in your
       | house back to apple?
        
       | Carrok wrote:
       | I really want an app I can scan my whole house with the
       | camera/lidar combo on my phone, and export it into Blender, where
       | I can then rearrange furniture and stuff. Apps like Scaniverse
       | get you pretty close, but everything is one mesh, would be great
       | to be able to slide the couch around the space without having the
       | manually cut it out of the mesh.
        
         | tuna74 wrote:
         | Yeah, how hard can it be :)
        
           | Carrok wrote:
           | These days? Doesn't seem that hard honestly.
        
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