The recently released AI Depth Anything 3 (DA3) depth map generator got me into a deep rabbit hole.
First DA3 is really impressive. Super fast and clean results.
Compared it to my favorite Marigold AI depth map generator. Marigold gives more detail but DA3 is also very good. A difference is the image on the left (Marigold) took ~5 minutes to generate while the image on the right (DA3) took 5 seconds. The two depth generators take completely different ways to compute the depth calculation.
But this got me looking at where the technology is out there. The subjective current commercial top depth map generator is ScuptOK. It seems they are generating a depth map and then passing it through several different graphical filters such as high pass filters.
So started doing the same and definitely makes a difference.
There are multiple filters that can be applied to get different looks for the height maps. So recommend folks to play with this. It does make a difference and can greatly reduce the amount of post processing.
The technologies are getting really good.
For SA, DA3 has multiple size models and the larger models are non-commercial only license. The smaller and mid sized models are more liberal in their license.
