360 Video Workflow

[mellinger]

Hi,

I'm using Metashape Standard and was inspired by this video (https://twitter.com/Ruben_Fro/status/1215561737430282240) to try capturing an outdoor scene with 360 video to get a point cloud with Metashape. I've had previous luck with limited sets of 360 photos but this is my first time trying it with thousands of frames.

My camera outputs 6 fisheyes per frame. I can manually assign each them to a group and set it to Camera Station but this process breaks down due to the size of the dataset.

Is there a workflow for setting up the camera stations in an automated way?

Thanks!
Max

[mellinger]

Hi, in case anyone finds this forum post in the future -- the answer appears to be to make a stitched equirectangular and then convert it into a 6-sided cubemap, then feed the cubemap images to Metashape. No additional configuration needed. Appears to stitch faster than setting up camera stations with as-good or better accuracy.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello Max,

Standard edition doesn't support equirectangular panoramas on input, however, you can use the source images per camera position and Camera Station concept instead:
 if the images are acquired using the common camera mounted on the tripod with the calibrated nodal head, then group each sub-set of images to the separate camera folder in the Workspace pane, assign Camera Station class to each group and then start the camera alignment procedure. For fisheye cameras you should also set the corresponding camera type in the Camera Calibration dialog.

Camera station assignment can be applied to multiple camera folders in the Workspace pane.

If you use Add Folder option and the images corresponding to the camera stations are already grouped into some subfolders in some "master" directory, then upload loading images to the chunk they will be automatically put to the separate camera folders according to the existing file folder layout.