Messages

1

General / Re: Metashapes calibration coifficients don't match OpenCV/Colmap?!

« on: February 25, 2026, 07:03:38 PM »

I haven't seen any "official" statements in the Metashape update logs:
@Agisoft, could you please confirm, if calibration intrinsics of cameras/images not undistorted to pinhole when exporting to Colmap are in a compatible Colmap/ OpenCV format?

2

General / Re: Metashapes calibration coifficients don't match OpenCV/Colmap?!

« on: February 23, 2026, 10:24:44 PM »

Thanks for the heads-up Jordan!
So what is your experience, do the MS-Colmap-export intrinsics now match OpenCV in 2.3?

3

General / Re: Importing fbx, abc cam postions etc. don't work

« on: December 16, 2025, 05:28:25 PM »

Great question Alexey, now sounds promising we'll get to the root of the issue 
In a production setup: import images to the chunk -> import fbx/abc cameras!
currently: mismatch of camera transforms, although geometry imports are fine

My previous suggestions for easily debugging this mismatch, was a round-trip fbx-camera export from Metashape, then re-importing that camera.fbx.
- open demo "building.psx" -> export cameras as fbx, re-import that camera.fbx -> works
- just slightly rotate, align the scene -> export cameras as fbx, re-import that camera file: doesn't match!

The latter scenario is of course the only one useful for importing external camera files:
the issue seems to be an expectation from Metashape for local chunk-coordinates when importing cameras, but not when importing geometry?!?

4

General / Re: Metashapes calibration coifficients don't match OpenCV/Colmap?!

« on: December 16, 2025, 03:49:12 PM »

Thanks so much for this insightful reply Alexey!
P1 and P2 discrepencies were also what I noticed with initial testing, will verify this topic with the next 2.30 release.
Also had previously noticed discrepancies with K3 and K4: i.e. deviations in the radial parameters that don't normally get noticed, if not scrutinizing the mismatch of the outer image regions with very wide-angle images...

5

General / Re: Importing fbx, abc cam postions etc. don't work

« on: December 16, 2025, 07:14:40 AM »

No! The fbx format from 3ds Max is of course fine. Same issue with Blender or any other 3d App.

6

General / Re: Metashapes calibration coifficients don't match OpenCV/Colmap?!

« on: December 15, 2025, 10:11:59 AM »

Thanks for the quick answer.
Yes, I always use undistorted images with Colmap exports for this very reason.
It's just that I've noticed others struggling with quality issues, even in the exported Colmap format, if they rely on the Metashape coifficients, expecting they would be compatible with the OpenCV standard.
It's tempting to skip the lengthy undistortion step.
Was just curious if this observation is fully correct, and can be confirmed by the team.

7

General / Re: Importing fbx, abc cam postions etc. don't work

« on: December 15, 2025, 10:00:45 AM »

It's all in local coordinates, when working with i.e. 3ds Max.
Main purpuse is creaing cameras in 3ds Max and then importing them into Metashape. I noticed the absolute positions then don't match in Metashape.
Exporting from Metashape to fbx, abc etc. however has always been correct.
That roundtrip example of first exporting cameras of an aligned! scene and then re-importing them, was just so that others can easily test this mis-alignment.

8

General / Metashapes calibration coifficients don't match OpenCV/Colmap?!

« on: December 14, 2025, 10:16:20 PM »

DearMetashape team,
Please verify if K1-K4, p1 etc match OpenCV standards?
My experience has beeen, that these calibration coifficients don't match, and that one has to undistort images within Metashape, before exporting, as K1+ etc parameters aren't compatible to i.e. OpenCV, Colmap...

9

General / Importing fbx, abc cam postions etc. don't work

« on: December 14, 2025, 09:51:18 PM »

I've isolated the issue now, and this is a bigger Metashape bug:
If we have a set of images preloaded in a chunk, we can import the predefined camera positions from external files, such as agisoft.xml, fbx, abc files etc.
However, this doesn't work, as Metashape is still interpreting external cam-coordinate imports to be within Metashapes local chunk coordinates!

Dear valued Metashape team, for testing: align your "building" default demo scene for example to i.e real horizontal alignment. Then export the cameras as fbx and re-imprt them again.
They will not match!

10

General / Re: Importing FBX & ABC Cameras not Working

« on: September 07, 2025, 03:32:35 PM »

On a further note to this topic:
When importing .abc cameras, Metashape keeps their relative alignment, but translates their global positions.

This is easy to reproduce:
- export cameras from an aligned Metashape scene as .abc
- in a new chunk/project with the images loaded, import that .abc for cameras
-> their global positions then don't match

This is a serious bug!
@Agisoft: just let me know if I can provide any further input, details

11

General / Re: Splitting up a multicam rig after the alignment process?

« on: March 29, 2025, 12:31:32 PM »

I'd like to bump this!
A few weeks ago I sent a demo scene illustrating this to Agisoft support with detailed explanations, and a ticket was opened.
Haven't heard back yet.
Looking forward to your feedback, thanks!

12

Bug Reports / Different image resolution when exporting just the masks in Colmap format

« on: March 09, 2025, 08:14:30 PM »

If I just check "Masks" (without "Images") when exporting the cameras in Colmap format, the image resolution of the exported masks is equal to the original image resolution: 6000 x 4000
However, if I check both "Images" AND "Masks" when exporting, they both get exported at 6888 x 4936
And with just "Images" checked, the resolting res is also 6888 x 4936

I'm using "Transform to pinhole camera model".

Expected behaviour: when exporting just the masks, they should have the same image dimensions as when exporting just the images.
And I'd actually prefer that generally the original image res is kept when transforming to pinhole, but I imagine that this "6888 x 4936" upscaling is in order to keep the 1-to-1 resolution of the original image center?!

13

Feature Requests / Re: Export COLMAP in standard

« on: October 07, 2024, 04:44:00 PM »

I'd like to chime in here:

1. dense point clouds exported from Metashape as points3d work fine in both Nerfstudio and Postshot.
I have a customized version of the gaussian export script which does exactly this. A friend programmed this for me, but it's a kind of a workaround which we therefore couldn't offer Open Source (unlike the Masks implementation we added to the script).
But @ PolarNick, I can of course provide you this script version for internal examination.
One has to install open3d for Metashape manually, and the script internally creates a tmp ply version, reads it back in an then exports it as points3d. A hack which Metashape developers can probably solve in a cleaner fashion, with direct access to the dense cloud points via Python API.
The script chooses the currently active Dense Point cloud in Metashape for export (which I find is a neat solution if the project contains multiple dense point clouds).

I guess replacing the points3d.txt is still compatible with colmap, unlike changing the images.txt with its matching points (although that 2d-matching information isn't needed for Gaussian Splatting reonstructions).
And I personally favour such a points3d approach, rather than mixing this with a ply file or similar.

2. Yes, it would be _extremely_ useful to be able to disable the export of images (like in the script version), due to the long time undistorting takes.
There are many use cases for this (as also mentioned in post above).

3. Looking ahead, it's only a matter of time until fisheye camera models are fully supported for Gaussian Splatting.
The first steps were already made in Nerfstudio's latest GSplat version (1.4).
That's why I think an option to:
a) create idealized fisheye images on export, with the cameras.txt parameters following the OpenCV Fisheye convention, or
b) leave the images as-is, but adapt the cameras.txt  (p1/2, b1/2 intrinsics get lost in this case, but something which is acceptable for OpenCV compatibility?!)

Point 3) should probably be in an advanced section of the export dialog, as users will need to know what they are doing. Maybe also point 2)?

For any discussions of this closer to the 3dGS applications, I'm on the Nerfstudio and Postshot Discord servers as @pics23d

Thanks!

14

General / Re: Splitting up a multicam rig after the alignment process?

« on: September 19, 2024, 09:23:50 PM »

Yes, being able to "break apart" the master slave structure after successful alignment would be really useful!
This should by default then be compatible with the colmap export, without any changes needed for that?!
@ Alexey, I can send you an example if required.

15

Python and Java API / Re: Metashape Script - Export Issues

« on: August 27, 2024, 07:48:22 PM »

Hi Egor,

I'd be grateful to know some details about your changes to the script and how they relate to Denislaq's original issue (error message)?

@ DenisIaq: I may be stating the obvious, but the export images part of the script undistorts the images, so that for Gaussian Splatting the OpenCV PINHOLE convention with zero distortions can be used (-> cameras.bin). So if the original images were distorted, using them with this script will produce subpar results.

Thanks, Guy