Topics

31

General / Set model orientation from markers?

« on: November 22, 2013, 11:42:54 PM »

Is there a way to define the model orientation using some manually placed markers?

For example, in images of a room interior, I can easily find two markers that define the "up" direction, and also three markers that define the horizontal plane.  Or even a large number of "floor" points.

But how can I integrate that into PhotoScan?

Thanks
Martin

32

General / What exactly do the reconstruction Quality labels mean?

« on: November 14, 2013, 02:40:08 PM »

The 'Quality' parameter for geometry reconstruction is split into low, medium, high etc.
Can someone please help me understand what these values mean?

I would guess they refer to the size/resolution of the resulting depth maps but have not found any information so far regarding this.  And if that is really the case, are these quality names ('low', 'medium', 'high') substitutes for certain percentages (e.g. 'low' meaning depth map has 10% size of the original image)?

Thanks for any insights
Martin

33

Bug Reports / Problems with FBX export

« on: November 14, 2013, 01:57:48 PM »

I keep having problems when exporting my PhotoScan results to FBX format and then importing this into 3ds Max 2014:

• The FBX file orientation is set to Y-up but I believe it should be set to z-Up.
• When using WGS84 coordinate system during export, the mesh shows up as a long thin line of vertices; using local coordinates works fine, though
• The mesh, when exported using local coordinates, does not have a name in 3ds Max
• It seems markers do not get exported to FBX
• All cameras in 3ds Max show wild manual clipping parameters
• Not sure this is within the capabilities of FBX, but since 3ds Max defines the camera aspect ratio using the render resolution, the camera information in 3ds max is only partially useful after import. Right now, the user needs to manually adjust them to match the image size used in PhotoScan

Is there any alternative to using FBX for getting the camera information from PhotoScan into 3ds Max?

On a side note: exporting as OBJ is extremely slow when compared to FBX or PLY, by a factor of ten or more.

Martin

34

Bug Reports / Pink screen freeze when running PhotoScan

« on: November 13, 2013, 06:16:36 PM »

Today, my system started freezing up while PhotoScan Pro was building geometry, coloring the entire screen in a uniform pink color and locking up completely (had to power it down).

This is on Win7 x64, 12GB RAM, Geforce GTX 580.

I have updated the Nvidia drivers now but would like to ask whether anyone else here has seen this before? Should I order a new GPU?

Thanks!
Martin

35

General / How to export mesh for round trip to 3ds Max AND back?

« on: November 12, 2013, 10:23:23 PM »

I tried several options for exporting the PhotoScan mesh to 3ds Max for post-processing and then bringing it back to PhotoScan but so far have failed to keep the mesh in it's original position/orientation.

I need to export to FBX in order to keep the camera information. Using local coordinates, the mesh will not show up where it was in PhotoScan upon re-import; using WGS coordinates, all I get in 3ds Max 2014 is all vertices in one line.

Could someone please clarify the individual steps needed to export a mesh from PhotoScan to 3ds Max for modification, followed by an export from 3ds Max and re-import into PhotoScan?

Thanks!
Martin

36

General / PS for landscape sweeps?

« on: November 11, 2013, 07:58:42 PM »

I am trying to use PhotoScan to generate high resolution landscape sweeps, similar to a panorama.
So instead of flying high and pointing the camera downwards, I would like to flow lower and tilt the camera more towards the horizon during flight.

The overall goal is to create a high resolution landscape view by 'stitching' together the individual camera pictures, using a 3D surface model generated by PhotoScan.

So far, I have only gotten mediocre results from the 'Build Geometry' step (too smooth (Arbitrary) or too noisy (heightfield) and generally too many artifacts when textured) and would be interested in any advice, comments, recommendations.

Also, I need much higher texture resolution than what I seem to be able to get (in the order of 50k * 50k). Any ideas how to achieve that?

Thanks!
Martin

37

General / Export point cloud to PDF?

« on: December 04, 2012, 03:20:27 PM »

Is it possible to export the point cloud/cameras after the photo alignment into a PDF?

Thanks
Martin

38

General / Helping PhotoScan with tricky aerial imagery

« on: December 04, 2012, 12:30:42 PM »

I have a somewhat difficult set of aerial photography, taken from a helicopter, unfortunately with suboptimal overlap (~ 30%) and with some images of forest/trees only. So, in order to get this set of images to a working state, I am looking for help on a few questions:

• I do not have GPS coordinates for the images but I do roughly know the order and layout of how the images were taken (the HC flew in a zig-zag path towards north) - is it possible to add this information to PhotoScan so it only tries to match neighboring images? In other words, I already know the rough layout/pattern of the images and PhotoScan should only 'refine' it.
• I read the manual and the online tutorials but still am not clear how I can manually add image features/virtual markers to help with difficult images?
• What can I do to manually help the alignment process? I am happy to delete erroneous points and/or matches between images but I am missing how to do this in a way that affects the alignment?
• Is it possible (and does it make sense) to start with a low accuracy and then subsequently refine the solution instead of redoing the photo alignment from scratch for each new accuracy setting?
• The images I work with are pretty high resolution (~70 megapixels each) - do I need to adjust some settings (e.g. max points per photo) in PhotoScan to correct for this?
• Alignment computation times for the entire set are rather long (> 3 hrs) - is there a smart way to break this down into smaller pieces that can be increased later bit by bit?

Thanks very much for any help and advice!
Martin