Agisoft PhotoScan 1.0.0 pre-release

[Dmitry Semyonov]

Pre-release version of Agisoft PhotoScan 1.0.0 is available for download.

This pre-release is considered as unstable and is not recommended for production use.

Please let us know if you have any problems using this version.

Please post problems and/or questions concerning other PhotoScan version in separate topics.

This topic will be removed when the final 1.0.0 version is released.

Note
Project files created with 1.0.0 version can't be opened with earlier versions.

EDIT:
PhotoScan 1.0.0 build 1795 was finally released. Thank you for useful feedback.

Please use the links on the main PhotoScan pages for download:
Agisoft PhotoScan Standard edition
Agisoft PhotoScan Professional edition

[tezen]

Thx Agi! ...very nice changes!

[FoodMan]

Thanks a lot ... Pscan rocks ! 

[RHenriques]

Where is now located the "Filter by Points" option that was located in the toolbar of the "Photos" pallete? This is a very useful function for quick editing rought point clouds. I can't also find the "Show depth maps funcion that was in the Photos pallete.
I was able to locate the "Filter by Markers" function using right mouse-click over the markers in the Workspace pallete.
These are very important functions in my opinion.

[Dmitry Semyonov]

Hello RHenriques,

The Filter by Points command was moved to the context menu of the 3D view (simply right click anywhere in the main model view).

Depth maps are now discarded by default (they were replaced by a dense point cloud data). In case you really need to keep them, there is an option in the Preferences dialog, Advanced tab. Unfortunately there is no way to display depth map thumbnails in this version. Are they really so useful? The dense point cloud should provide a better visual representation of possible problems in the data set.

[Oli63]

Sounds all extremely cool! Many thanks. Special thanks for the multitexturing.

[photogrammetrix]

Hi Dmitry,

very good and very useful new functions. I am currently playing around with it  under Linux Mint 15, 64 bit, nVidia Driver Version 310.44.

Image set of 153 21 megapixel aerial images from Canon EOS 5d

Alignment, Scene reconstruction and dense point cloud in high mode work fine (240 Mio point).
But mesh generation fails, independent of settings, in the following way:

mesh generation dialog comes up after a short while, options can all be set as necessary.

When clicking ok, mesh generation starts, when progressbar reaches approx. 10-12%, progressbar dialog is closed and a mesh with 0 faces is generated. Thats it. Am I missing something?


Cheers

[RHenriques]

Thanks Dmitry. I'm now generating a dense point cloud from a previous project. I'll test things after. I'm curious about the orthophoto generation in this version since this is a very important function for me.
I think that it would be more logical to keep filter functions handy and not hide them only into context menus. Maybe you could keep a "filter by" button and add all the filter possibilities as a menu. This button should be in the left of the current "Reset filter" button. This way, in my opinion, is more logical than spread filter functions all over the interface (which is also good and you must keep them) without a centralized option to do so in the "Photos" palette. You could even use the "Reset filter" button without the red X over it. Options would be grayed on or off according to selection (For instance if a user selected points from the 3D view or a marker from the GCP view). Filter should include, at least, the options "By marker" and "By selected points".
Considering the depth maps thumbnails, they are not that useful indeed, considering the dense point cloud option. This is a great add to this version!
Keep on the great work!

Cheers

[photogrammetrix]

Hi,

Suggestions to make interfacing to other software more comfortable:

Import and export functions for dense point cloud / mesh to Point Cloud library PCD format and Cloud Compare Bin-Format, maintaining XYZRGBNXNYNZ attributes. Would save a lot of time that is otherwise used for intermediate conversion-steps.

Would be really great!

Cheers

[RHenriques]

Hi again Dmitry.
This version is very promising, at least for aerial photography processing. I've generated, from a previous project already optimized and with markers, a dense point cloud in medium quality. After, I've generated a mesh from the dense point cloud with the suggested high settings. The number of polygons calculated by PS (suggested value) was quite lower than the number calculated in the previous version mesh with polygon number defined as 100000000 to generate the maximum number possible of polygons. PS 1.0b gave me about 4 700 000 polygons and version 0.9.1 gave me 25 000 000 polygons. Even so, differences are almost unperceivable and, to be honest, it seems that the 4.7 million surface is more similar to the real world surface than the 25 million one. This is great if it is consistent for all projects. The good news here is that, with this new PS workflow, you can generate a great quality mesh in less time and much less RAM. I'm impressed with the results so far. DEM's also tend to be smaller for the same final terrain quality.
Considering the orthophoto generation, the color correction feature works great and the general quality of the orthophoto is better (sometimes, in some areas, much better) than the previous version. I've noted impressive improvements in houses rooftops (the dem also produces better results here) and in areas with moving vegetation. I've only noted that PS tends to ghost slightly some moving objects such as cars, but this is not a problem considering the overall improved quality of the orthophoto, which is, by far, more important.
Just one question. To generate the highest possible mesh quality we still can use custom mesh settings with a high polygon number, as in the previous version?
I'm still trying to figure out how the "Classify ground points" from the dense point cloud works. It seems a very nice and powerful feature, similar to LAS tools, that can give us control to filter a wide range of terrain features. Although you must provide some documentation to give us perfect control over it.
Cheers

[airmap3d]

Awesome work Agisoft!

A great software package that just keeps getting better!!!   

[Porly]

Hello Dmitry,
first of all, great improvements!!! Edge extraction of buildings in height field mode improved also a lot.

My questions:
What is the exact function of class assignment? I tryed to classify some objects as forest or building and started the mesh operation. The was no difference to the unclassified model. Is the behaviour of the mesh filtering different when working with classes? For me there was no difference. Or is it only to ignore classified objects during the mesh triangulation step???

As RHenriques mentioned, the maximal number of faces never reaches the max possible face count. It would be nice to have the possibility to set it to max in advanced mode. Mesh looks "denser" in the previous version (0.9.1). For example: from 8 000 000 points, i can create only 3 000 000 faces.

The recommended points per photo in version 0.9.1 was 40 000. Now the default setting is 5 000. So does it mean that the quality of the extracted features in alignment step is better (interest value is higher)?? This would speed up  the algin step a lot   
Edit: Seems like 5000 was my last setting in previous version, so it was taken for the new version too.


Cheers

Porly

[Dmitry Semyonov]

Thank you for positive feedback.

photogrammetrix
Can you please provide a processing log (from the the Console pane) for the case with failed mesh generation?

RHenriques
Thank you for suggestions. We will consider them shortly.

photogrammetrix
While both PCD and Cloud Compare file formats are documented and can be implemented in PhotoScan, it is not clear what are the benefits of these compared to binary PLY file format.
It looks like both PCD and Cloud Compare support PLY format natively. Moreover, all these formats provide similar file sizes, and support point colors and normals equally well.
Have you tried PLY format with PCD or Cloud Compare? Are there any problems with it?

RHenriques
Thank you for feedback regarding ghosting in case of moving objects. We are going to investigate it in more detail.

The polygon count can be set to a custom value as before. Several presets with different polygon counts are provided mainly for convenience.

Documentation on the new functionality is still in the works. We will post the link here as soon as it is available.

Porly
Point classes are mainly used to exclude specific portions of the point cloud from triangulation step. This can be configured using Point classes option in the Build Mesh dialog (e.g. for DTM generation).
Besides that point class assignment has no effect on the generated surface.

The polygon count can be set to any desired value using Custom option.

The default points per photo value is still 40000. You may have changed it earlier, as PhotoScan doesn't reset settings to defaults after update.

[Infinite]

Very cool! thank you Agisoft, will be testing.

From using the PS091_coordinates_to_bounding_box_rotate.py script which will correctly orient scenes to match 3rd party application orientations. I can see that predefined views are interpreted wrong.

As we would expect Z should represent front, back, Y should be top,bottom and x should be right,left

At the moment top, front, left views are wrong angles, and mapped incorrectly.

I'm also interested how we define model / scene pivot when using the new rotation tool?

[Dmitry Semyonov]

Hello Infinite,

We have selected Z-up Y-front X-right convention for PhotoScan to be consistent with engineering data. Does it introduce significant problems in your case?

The pivot is currently not changed by a rotation tool, only orientation is affected.