Messages

271

General / Re: Dense Cloud quality setting, what does it control?

« on: January 26, 2014, 12:38:05 PM »

The Dense Cloud quality setting controls at which size the source images are used:

Ultra = full size
High = Downscaled to 50%
Medium = Downscaled to 25%
Low = Downscaled to 12,5%
Lowest = Downscaled to 6,75%

Please also see this thread: http://www.agisoft.ru/forum/index.php?topic=1741.0

I would still like to see a custom setting, where I can just fill out 75% for example. Some of my projects are getting too big on Ultra, and have too few points on High. Of course I could scale my source images, but having a scaling setting in Photoscan would be much faster.

272

Bug Reports / Re: Estimate Image Quality - inconsistent results

« on: January 24, 2014, 11:07:55 PM »

Yes, that makes a lot of sense when you have free standing objects with a blurry background.
But the estimated sharpness values still do not have enough separation to pick out bad images.

I've switched to running a Photoshop batch script that crops the center of the image, enlarges it by 200% (with nearest neighbour resize) and saves it as a different file. Then I flip through these images by hand and judge sharpness. It sucks having to go through 400+ files per project manually, but there is no other way to get perfect sharpness.

273

General / Re: Trying to understand filtering and pointcloud/mesh/DSM detail in 1.0

« on: January 24, 2014, 01:42:17 PM »

It looks like your triangles are much bigger in the latest version, are you sure you used the same settings for meshing?

Also, the more even lighting and the snow in the photos from earlier version is giving Photoscan a lot of useful details to extract depth from. I can imagine this also influences the quality of the reconstruction.

In the later version, you can see that the noisy areas line up with the parts that are in the shade. We are doing scans on a smaller scale, but we've seen similar problems with shaded areas, where Photoscan tries to extract depth from the ISO noise in shaded areas.

274

Face and Body Scanning / Re: Inconsistencies and poor facial reconstruction

« on: January 22, 2014, 11:30:04 AM »

This won't help alignment, but I would try and place the top camera slightly lower, so that it would capture more of the face, (should be possible while still capturing enough of the top of the head.)

Currently the top camera is basically rotating in place, and when photos are too close together it can give problems with accuracy on the surface (because the difference in camera position is too small for Photoscan to make a meaningful calculation on the surface).

275

General / Re: Zenithal Photos

« on: January 22, 2014, 11:20:59 AM »

I assume this part of the tips and tricks is aimed at aerial photography. I think with Zenithal they mean photos with the camera pointing straight down to the ground, and with Obliques they mean cameras at an angle.

So the photos with the camera at an angle are not very useful compared to the photos with the camera pointing straight down.

This is for doing a reconstruction of a (more or less) flat terrain. If you are doing a 3D object or a human scan then the situation is of course different.

276

Face and Body Scanning / Re: Charging 50+ Cameras / Batteries

« on: January 21, 2014, 08:18:06 PM »

Which model cameras do you have?

Some camers can charge using the usb plug. But I'm sure you tried that.

277

Face and Body Scanning / Re: Setting up Multi-Cam System: NEED CONSULTANT

« on: January 19, 2014, 06:33:00 PM »

I can recommend Lee Perry Smith from Infinite Realities (http://ir-ltd.net/). He has been at the forefront of Photoscan / multi camera setups and has always been very generous with sharing details about his workflow. He's available for work on consultancy basis as well, so you could book a day of training at his studio.

Out of curiosity, what kind of subjects are you photographing? 12 cameras seems an odd number (too few to do a complete 360 degree scan, but too many to move them around for multiple shots).

278

Bug Reports / Re: Estimate Image Quality - inconsistent results

« on: January 17, 2014, 03:50:54 PM »

Hi Alex,

You were right, the artificial pattern was the source of the inconsistent results.

But even with a real photo, the differences in estimated image quality are often still too small to differentiate properly. In the attached example you can see that the difference between a perfectly sharp and blurred image is only a value of "0.03" This value is so small that we cannot easily pick out the blurred images from a large batch of photos by sorting on image quality.

Perhaps it is because camera motion blur is often linear, so there are still a lot of sharp edges in the photo (perpendicular to the direction of the motion blur)?

279

Bug Reports / Estimate Image Quality - inconsistent results

« on: January 17, 2014, 01:50:37 PM »

We are struggling with picking out photos with motion blur using the Estimate Image Quality function. Sometimes images with higher than average estimated image quality are blurred anyway. At other times, images with low estimated quality are actually pretty sharp.

I did some tests with an artificial noise pattern, and the results are a bit inconsistent. When I add more blur to a noise pattern, the estimated quality actually goes up. The sharpest version has a lower estimated images quality than a version with a large amount of blur. Please see attached image with crops of the noise patterns and Image Quality values.

It would be great if the Estimate Image Quality fucntion would reliably pick out blurred images, because having to go through a sets of 400+ photos manually is no fun

 

280

General / Re: Is the AMD 7970 graphics card still the best option for PhotoScan?

« on: January 16, 2014, 11:05:56 PM »

From some reviews it seems that two 7990 cards in one machine will cause them to overheat.  It might work,  but you'll need really good case cooling.

281

General / Re: Is the AMD 7970 graphics card still the best option for PhotoScan?

« on: January 14, 2014, 02:14:38 PM »

I have the same CPU, it's very fast. Keep in mind that this CPU is limited to a maximum of 64GB memory. For very big projects you will need more memory for the Mesh generation stage (or you have to build in separate chunks).

Unfortunately the only other option (Xeons) makes things a lot more expensive.

282

General / Re: Computer requirements...

« on: January 14, 2014, 12:29:52 PM »

The more memory the better. Small projects (no more than 30 or 40 14 Mpix pictures) will do with 32 to 64 GB of RAM and bigger projects will need more than 256 GB of RAM. This applies specially for using the Ultra High setting when building the Dense Cloud.

Lots of memory is mostly needed for the Mesh generation stage. The Dense cloud stage does not need that much memory. (Although I did have it run out of 64GB memory with 400+ 36MP photo project).

Dual CPUs are not giving problems, but the latest model Xeons are just not as fast as you would expect them to be (compared to the i7 consumer versions). But they offer support for more than 64GB memory, so that is a big benefit.

283

General / Re: Test Renders - Camera Calibration Settings

« on: January 14, 2014, 12:21:34 PM »

You can run the Lens Correction filter with manual settings, which will allow you to introduce any level of lens distortion you want.

Adding chromatic abberation is not possible with the latest Lens Correction filter, because it uses a method that only corrects based on the actual abberation that is present. The older versions of Photoshop Camera RAW import had a simpler correction method that would 'shift' channels. With this version you could overcorrect (and introduce more abberation). Not sure if that version also had a Filter version of that correction module.

Please keep us updated on your research, we are very interested in your findings.

284

General / Re: Is the AMD 7970 graphics card still the best option for PhotoScan?

« on: January 14, 2014, 11:55:11 AM »

Hi Marcel,

Is this result for one R290 card ?

Guys,  I wanted to get 7970, however it is out of stock.. What else do you recommend ? R290x or Nvidia series :=)

Cheers

No, each card is doing between 700 and 900 million samples per second (it depends on the project).

The 7970 is still gives the best performance for your money. The R9 290 is slightly faster but more expensive (and runs a lot hotter as well). If the 7970 is out of stock you can consider the AMD R9 280X, which is the re-branded version of the 7970.

nVidia cards are still not so good for Photoscan. I tested a GTX760 and it was giving around 450 million samples a second. The Titan has similar performance as the R9 290, but at double the price.

In practice if you have 2x 7970 you'll be fine. Don't focus too much on the GPUs, you'll need a fast CPU as well for all the phases that are not GPU accellerated.

285

Feature Requests / Re: Export depth for all photos

« on: January 13, 2014, 01:29:27 PM »

Quick workaround that might be useful:

Enable 'keep depth maps' under Options
Run Dense Cloud
Save your project
Change project file extension to .zip

Now you can open the project as a zip archive, the depth maps are stored in the archive as EXR files.