Topics

1

Feature Requests / Alpha in PNG files should be treated as a mask

« on: January 04, 2014, 10:19:50 PM »

In creating a model from JPeg photos, I went through the trouble of editing out all of the parts of the photos that were not part of the model (leaving Alpha=0 "transparent") and stored the edited photos to PNG files. In my mind this should have told PhotoScan to treat the transparent parts of the photos as a sort of mask to make the solver ignore those areas and consider them to not contribute to the solve of the model. But the solve created a lot of snow-like looking white stuff where there should have been no geometry. My photos had no white yet a lot of "white stuff" ended up in my model. I can only presume that the solver was ignoring the Alpha in the PNG files and was placing a default white background behind the photos and then interpreted it as part of the substance of the model. This should not have happened.

2

General / Having trouble realigning photos

« on: September 29, 2013, 08:04:48 PM »

I have a project with 84 photos. On one side of the object, PS got lost and the cameras are in wrong places. The manual says "Reset alignment for incorrectly positioned photos using Reset Photo Alignment command from the photo context menu." If I select one of the cameras there is no "Reset Photo Alignment" command in the photo menu in which all of the commands are grayed out. There is also no "Align Selected Photos" in the Photo menu as described in the next step in the manual.

3

General / Document describing camera data export (XML) format?

« on: September 16, 2013, 01:11:37 AM »

Hello,

The XML file produced when selecting Tools/"Export Cameras..." contains sixteen floating point numbers under the tag of <transform>. Is there a document somewhere that describes the meanings of each of these numbers. They are just a list and are not given any attribute names. The other information in the file seems to be fairly self-explanatory.

4

General / Proper orientation of Model (and other related issues)

« on: September 13, 2013, 03:15:25 AM »

After successfully digitizing an object I am now thinking about scanning environments. When I processed the photos the software produced a model that had some arbitrary size and orientation. This is okay for freeform model building but I see a lot of good information being wasted. In particular, the PhotoScan knows the relative orientations of the camera perspectives when the photos were taken. It would be nice if I could tell the software how far appart the camera positions were and what their inclinations were. This would help in setting up a coordinate system that could be used with my other software. With this information the software could make the object the right size and oriented correctly. Then it would be nice if PhotoScan could optionally export a marker for each camera position in the model. This would help in aligning the scanned environment with the CG virtual environment.

In anticipation for assisting in this process, I have purchased a geared camera head that can be leveled. I can control the three rotational orientations and measure them to a fraction of a degree. I also have tape measures for measuring short distances and a LASER range finder to measure distant objects up to about 1000m away. It would be nice to be able to feed this information to PhotoScan and have it solve my coordinate system for me (I will also need a compass). I understand that many cell phones have GPS in them and even include that information into the EXIF meta data associated with the photos. I do not have a cell phone and will be using a higher quality camera for taking all of my photos and will not have GPS data (which is only acurate to ~3m anyway).

Is it possible to do all of these things in PhotoScan or will I have to orient and scale everything manually?