Messages

211

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.5 pre-release

« on: January 09, 2012, 09:02:43 PM »

Problems with Ortophoto generation remain from version 0.8.4. If we try to render an ortophoto from a site with geometrically defined features mixed with terrains, like houses for instance, most of the times roofs or straight walls will get higly contorted.
There are also some problems with visualization, under macosx, when models exceed about 20 000 000 faces. Photoscan easely crashes beyond that limit.
When we start a batch with photo alignment and mesh generation, things will get done but, after that, the system gets very slow or completly blocked. It seems to be some memory management problem or memory dumping must be optimized. From activity monitor, we can see that Photoscan still blocks huge amounts of memory even with all the processes finished. 
Cheers
 

212

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.5 pre-release

« on: January 06, 2012, 12:39:21 AM »

While using photos from UAV's or Kite Aerial Photography, I'm getting quicker and better results! Maybe it's an easy problem to fix. Most of the errors that I got came from very non favourable datasets. Aerial photography, with a good amount of  superimposition, is giving me better results.
Cheers

213

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.5 pre-release

« on: January 05, 2012, 04:17:10 PM »

Hi Alexey

All my tests were made without any markers. Only used the default alignment settings, without pair selection, markers or masks in the photos.
Cheers

214

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.5 pre-release

« on: January 04, 2012, 09:28:04 PM »

I also did some testing and I've got mixed results. In some cases, the results are a lot worst than in the latest versions. Some models that worked great in the 0.8.4 version get messed up in this version. In some cases all the model is crunched into an indistinguishable amalgam of points with the cameras spreaded allover, with nonsense positions. In a few cases, mainly related with terrain models from aerial photography, results are obtained a lot faster and seem to be better than in version 0.8.5. In one case, both the model and the orthophoto are more precise than in any previous version. I've tested some of the new features, which are all very interesting and useful. I had some problems in the Ground Control pallete. This is a great feature but, when I tried to check errors from the photos the model simply vanished. We need a new manual to some of these new features. I would like to see feature improvements in the Matches palette too. A manual edition of matching points could be a huge addition. This version is a very promising version.

215

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.4 pre-release

« on: November 25, 2011, 12:47:24 AM »

Hi Monserrat
Thanks for the link :-)
I'm already using it to for educational purposes. I was using it before with the Photoscene name. They changed it to 123Dapp recently. My students are learning the principles and results of photogrammetry with it. It's not as powerful as Photoscan but we can achieve great results also. I noticed that, with large photo sets, photoscan produces better results. And of course, Photoscan deals with Orthos and Georreferencing.
Cheers :-)

216

General / Re: Difference Map or 3D Model

« on: November 15, 2011, 02:47:45 AM »

Hi

I'm using Photoscan to similar purposes, applied to coastal dynamics. To compare two sediment surfaces, from different time intervals, you must generate the DEM's using Agisoft Photoscan. Be sure to have some control points, shared by the surfaces generated. It must be something that it's fixed and can't be moved by the dynamical agent. I suggest you to measure them accurately using a total station or a dGPS device. That points will allow you to tie the models for correct net volume examination, using same "xyz reference points". You can then export the model as a GeoTiff and import them to a real GIS application. Using ArcGIS or QuantumGIS, for instance, the pixel color will be interpreted as the z value. Then all you need is to make raster operations between the aligned DEM files. If you use the subtraction, for instance, positive values in the resulting surface will be zones of accretion and negative values will be zones of erosion.
Cheers

217

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.4 pre-release

« on: November 11, 2011, 01:24:05 AM »

Hi Dmitry, I noticed some distortion in the houses, the small harbour (the one with the blue boat) limits are also irregular. The shades that you are referring are also noticeable but not my main concern. The main problem is occasional distortion in random parts of the orthophoto. I cannot see your ortho perfectly (the file is too small) to see if you get the same problems as I did. For example, it seems that the house with the gray roof seems to be distorted in your photo, in the right side, which does not seem to occur in the SenseFly final result. This kind of distortions are my main problem with Photoscan now. It's strange because, most of the times, the limit of the 3D object in the DEM it's very accurate but the correspondant orthophoto limits are not.
Cheers

Hi Monserrat, are you sure about SenseFly service using Orima? Their service is this one http://pix4d.com/
I think that the software approach is very similar to the Photoscan one but I can be wrong, of course :-). The IMU unit from the SenseFly CAM UAV is not as precise as a real IMU unit from classic aerial photography. Mainly is used for the UAV navigation, stabilization and slightly for coarse photo alignment. Even the camera in the UAV is a consumer one. See their site for details. I doubt that it can be used with the workflow you described, common in classical photogrammetry. The reason I bought Photoscan is that I can get great results with a lot less work from images from these UAVS and from Kite aerial photography for instance. Even using classical aerial photography (1/15000 to 1/8000 scales), I've perfected a workflow, using Photoscan in the end, with photos digitized with a Photogrammetric Scanner (or even with photos from Digital Aerial Photography systems like an Intergraph DMC). The results are a lot better, more accurate and, mainly, much much less time consuming that I ever reached with ERDAS. For my investigation purposes, the results are perfectly within the precision that I could expect from this kind of photography. Of course, I always use a very accurate assemblage of ground control points obtained in the field, with precise geodesy data and a very precise Trimble GPS. This is the only way you can get satisfactory data from photogrammetry.

Cheers

218

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.4 pre-release

« on: November 10, 2011, 01:01:39 AM »

The license key issue under Lion is gone, as Jan already posted.
Some work must be done in the orthophoto generation. This is a very sensitive issue for me because I work with UAV's for good orthophoto and DEM generation. Often some portions of the ortho get highly distorted, which it's more noticed in things that are geometrically well defined such as houses or straight roads. I never get the exactly same result while testing the same array of photos twice. Results are very good for the 3D terrain model, which tends to be very accurate, but are surprisingly and unexpectadly jagged in the orthophoto. The latest 1289 Beta produced better results in some parts of orthos i've made (Mosaic parameter) than in the latest betas but introduced some strange ghosting blurs around some well defined terrain features and abrupt rectilinear color transitions. I hope you can fine-tune this algorithm. I've made a test with the imagery from Sensefly site and results from Photoscan were better (when compared to the included post flight service) in the DEM generation. Posflight services from Sensefly produced a better Orthophoto. Even so, Photoscan can already achieve great results. Ortho from Sensefly is here "http://www.sensefly.com/downloads/mapping_examples/shoreline/tiles/googlemaps.html" and original RAW imagery, that can be tested in Photoscan, is available here "http://www.sensefly.com/downloads/mapping_examples/shoreline"
Cheers

219

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.4 pre-release

« on: November 02, 2011, 07:36:07 PM »

This problem (licence/OSX) only occurs under latest  Lion version. I've tested in an ancient machine with MacOSX 10.6.x and I had no problems. Prior beta version was behaving normally.
I've already used the superuser suggestion but no luck.
Cheers

220

General / Re: Agisoft PhotoScan 0.8.4 pre-release

« on: November 01, 2011, 06:29:24 AM »

The latest beta (0.8.4 - 1277), seems to have a bug in MacOSX. The software keeps asking for the registration code every startup. Anyone else has noticed this bug?

221

Feature Requests / Re: Custom colour ramps and lighting positions

« on: July 13, 2011, 06:57:23 PM »

I subscribe this request!
Cheers

222

Bug Reports / Re: Decimating Mesh

« on: June 23, 2011, 03:19:43 AM »

Thanks Alexey. For now I'm going to avoid decimating mesh as you suggested. This problem is new for me. Never had it in pervious betas where decimating mesh was also used.
As someone suggested somewhere in the forums, please add a lasso selection tool for the selection of faces in the model.
Cheers

223

Bug Reports / Decimating Mesh

« on: June 22, 2011, 05:55:41 AM »

Something is wrong with the Decimating Mesh step while building geometry in this latest beta. I've run some chunks that took about 2 hours to complete the calculation until the "Integrating depth maps" step. After, the Decimating Mesh starts automatically and says that it has 80.29h to calculate!!!! It takes ages, even considering that the estimation varies. I had to force quit photoscan after one entire day with only 2% completed.  What can be wrong (if anything os wrong)? Is anyone else experiencing this? (MacOSX version)
Cheers

224

General / Re: Video presentation

« on: June 14, 2011, 09:16:58 PM »

Are you in a Mac or in a PC?
If you are in a Mac I suggest ScreenFlow.
If you are on a PC Camtasia will be perfect.
Cheers

225

General / Re: Photoscan with Old Aerial Photos

« on: June 14, 2011, 04:16:51 PM »

As DiegoTorres said, your problem is precisely cutting borders with the same dimension in all photos. Aerial photos do not have the same border dimensions because the black border width is not the same among a photographic session strip. The only thing that maintain the proportions relatively to the photographed area are the fiducial marks. So it's not a good idea to eliminate these marks and the borders. First cut all the photos using the fiducial marks as guides for the cutting borders. After, if necessary, you can straighten the photos if you notice some need for rotation but you must ensure that the rotation is perfectly justified (use photoshop to measure rotation for instance). After this pre-processing you can then apply your workflow because the elimination of the black borders will not have the Aerial photograph border as reference but the fiducial marks, which will not add any distortion to your imagery and will allow Photoscan to calculate the correct parameters.

Cheers