Topics

46

Camera Calibration / Undistort Photos

« on: May 10, 2013, 05:23:48 PM »

Ability to undistort single or multiple images based on calibration results. I realise this is available within photoscan once images are aligned, but sometimes i would like to be able to remove lens distortion for other purposes on individual images that can't be aligned in photoscan.

Thanks!

James

47

Bug Reports / Drag and Drop to Add Photos

« on: April 12, 2013, 06:20:15 PM »

When I drag and drop photos into the photoscan workspace they are added twice if I have rotated them already within windows explorer. This does not happen if I go through Workflow -> Add Photos.

48

Feature Requests / Marker Refinement

« on: March 26, 2013, 06:13:30 PM »

Not so much a request as an ill thought out idea.

When you specify a marker in an image(s), it's position is estimated in the remaining images (presumably) based solely on internal and external camera parameters.

If the alignment/calibration is anything but perfect then there will be errors in these estimated marker positions and they will require manual intervention to correct.

Would it be possible to add an image based constraint to the marker estimation, so it uses the camera parameters for the initial estimation, and then refines it based on image content?

I imagine this could potentially be more accurate than manual placement, especially on planar surfaces where markers are unlikely to be occluded. In these cases, a low quality model could be used to predict the image transformation required to match the markers.

It should probably be disabled by default and maybe just attached to a keyboard shortcut so you can look at it and hit a key if you think an image based refinement would be useful/better than doing it yourself. Another keyboard shortcut to accept the estimated position as valid, and another to skip to the next/previous image in which the selected marker position is estimated would also be nice if nothing else!

It may be necessary to specify a marker size (similar to camera tracking in Blender) so Photoscan knows the radius of the area to match, which could slow down the process rather than speed it up, but this could be tackled by using a click-drag motion to specify position and radius when the markers are initially defined. Depth maps could be used to calculate marker radius in subsequent images based on distance.

Thanks for listening to my brief spike in brain activity!

49

General / Photoscan on a laptop

« on: March 19, 2013, 03:13:43 PM »

Hi all,

I'm going to be traveling round quite a bit in April collecting images for a couple of projects (terrestrial/architectural) and wanted to get a head start on the processing by doing as much as I can while I'm away.

Can anyone recommend a meaty laptop at ~1500GBP?

So far the best candidate I have seen is the Dell Precision M4700 which can be pre configured with up to 32GB RAM, which is plenty.

I currently have a M4300 which I think is lovely but I need more power!

Thanks

James

50

Bug Reports / Export -> Undistort Photos 0.9.0 1586 + 0.9.1 1632

« on: February 27, 2013, 02:08:33 PM »

Can't seem to export undistorted photos, it lets me select the destination folder but nothing is created there.

This is also the case with 0.9.1 build 1632.

I am using pscan pro 64 on win 7 64.

Project is simple, 3x 36mp photos.

Refined/adjusted lens calibration parameters were calculated during align photos so there is an undistortion to be done!

51

Bug Reports / Keyboard Shortcuts/Menu Accessibility 0.9.1

« on: February 14, 2013, 04:12:26 PM »

Using ALT+Key to access the menu bar only works for File, Edit, Tools and Help. View, Workflow and Photo menus are not accessible this way as the V, W and P keys are handled elsewhere, even when ALT has been pressed.

I was just trying to reset a load of photo masks very quickly when I discovered this. I shall try importing a blank mask instead.

52

Bug Reports / Mosaic blending with Masks

« on: January 23, 2013, 04:27:00 PM »

I am using pscan pro 0.9 1586 and finding that i get black areas when i build my texture using mosaic mode.

The black areas correspond to areas that have been masked out in some photos, even though there is coverage in other photos.

When i use average blending there are no black areas.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or result of me not understanding whats going on! The mesh was manipulated slightly in blender.

It makes no difference which mapping mode i use.

Has anyone seen this before?

Thanks!

53

Feature Requests / Weighted Average Texture Blending Mode

« on: July 25, 2012, 02:26:16 PM »

Using average blending mode, often the edges of photos can be apparent in the final texture if there were changes in lighting.

Would it be possible to implement a 'weighted' average blend mode, where the weight is 1 for non masked areas, 0 for masked areas and the 'area' outside the image, and a user defined gradient ,i.e. number of pixels, between the two. The gradient should begin at the edge of the mask/image so that masked areas do not begin to re-appear.

I think this should at least soften the egdes? Or any other algorithm to achieve the same result!

I tried doing this myself by blurring my masks in photoshop, but these are always converted to black/white on import.

Mosaic blend seems to do a better job of blending joins between photos, but because I have such changes in lighting (I didn't take the images!) average mode is better at creating a uniform 'light distribution'.

Currently using 0.90 pre-release 1534 pro 64 bit.

54

General / Ornate Ceiling

« on: July 20, 2012, 12:14:24 PM »

I am trying to align photos of an old ornate ceiling, which although is very colourful and detailed, is also repetitively patterned, so photos are mostly misaligned.

I have a wealth of 3D information as the ceiling was also surveyed with a laser scanner, and the photos were taken in a grid so i know roughly what the camera positions were, and the orientation is generally the same (although not always).

The ceiling is 8m x 8m, and I have ~150 images in about 12 rows of 12 photos.

Will it help the alignment if I set accurate 'ground' control markers using vertices from the laser scan point cloud, and how many points per photo would I need to specify?

Will it help to provide approximate camera positions, bearing in mind they will be very approximate?

Using the ground control image pair preselection method seems like an obvious choice, and this does rely on having camera positions. Does this also require camera orientation, and does it consider the marker positions?

I have tried adding markers (maybe not enough), camera positions (maybe too approximate), and orientations (maybe just wrong!) and not yet had much luck.

Does anyone have any suggestions on workflow regarding the above options? Or maybe breaking it down into chunks i.e. one chunk per photo strip.

Attached images (originals are 6MP) give an idea of what i'm up against!

I do not need to generate geometry, just align photos at this stage.

Thanks for any advice anyone can offer!

55

Bug Reports / OBJ File Standard

« on: May 02, 2012, 07:19:43 PM »

OBJ files exported from Photoscan do not import into 3D Reshaper (http://www.3dreshaper.com/).

I contacted Technodigit to see if this was a bug with their software, with an example OBJ, but they state that the OBJ is not compliant and should contain the following lines:

Code: [Select]

...
vt 0.454957 0.497448
vt 0.507275 0.474474

---------Code to add------------
g Mesh1
usemtl Textured
------- End code to add------------

f 1/10 2/11 3/12
f 1/10 8/17 6/15
f 1/10 6/15 5/14
...http://www.technodigit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20

Is this a shortcoming of Photoscan, or is the OBJ standard just not well defined?

James

56

Feature Requests / Multiple photo view for setting markers

« on: January 19, 2012, 07:26:17 PM »

It already looks like photoscan should support a multiple document style interface, but i can't see how to get two photos open alongside each other in order to set control point markers easily on photo pairs.

Also when alternating between photos, the zoom level in one photo is affected by the zoom level in the other photo.

If photos could be opened alongside each other, with independent zoom levels, then it could be much faster to specify markers.

57

General / Is photoscan professional right for me?

« on: November 09, 2011, 04:16:27 PM »

Hi there,

We currently use photoscan standard edition for small projects where accuracy is not important.

We would like to be able to generate more accurate models and orthophotos of objects such as exterior building facades and ceilings, amongst other things.

I notice that the professional edition of photoscan allows the import of control points, although it seems to be completely oriented around aerial imagery and ground control.

Can anyone confirm whether this is also suitable for control not constrained to ‘ground’ i.e. points on a building facade measured using survey instrumentation - total station, laser scanner etc...

Thanks