camera solving and scene reconstruction

[hughspeers]

Hi there
I've been experimenting with Syntheyes a camera solving tool amongst other things , and I thought it would be very useful to be able to match up the point clouds and meshes created in Photoscan 3d automatically with it or another Camera solving tool.

For instance you could solve a shot that takes place around an object or building and then export the camera for use as camera alignment hints in Photoscan.
Could Photoscan add another camera import format that's a native export from most camera solving programs ?
cheers
John

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello John,

Do you mean importing camera positions when the point cloud is calculated if another software or setting up the coordinate system in PhotoScan corresponding to the one in the external program?

In the first case you can use "Import Cameras"  command from the Tools menu. Currently PhotoScan supports bundler format.
And in the latter case the coordinate system could be set in PhotoScan Pro using "Ground control" dialog in Tools menu - then you'll need to import or input camera coordinates acquired in external software.

Could you please also specify the camera import format you mentioned?

[hughspeers]

Hi there Alex
Thanks for getting back to me and sorry for the slow response.
I'm tracking a mixture of stop motion and filmed shots in a program like boujou called Syntheyes.
And I've been doing some object reconstruction using photoscan.
I'd really like to be able to import the point cloud and meshes into Houdini after I've tracked my shots.
But getting them into the right position is proving difficult.
I thought it might be interesting to be able to import the camera positions exported from the matchmoving software into Photoscan and use them as hints to create the meshes and textures from the shots.
Then you could export the mesh in relation to the match moved scene.
For now though I could import the photoscan mesh and camera data into houdini.
That will at least get me closer to aligning the mesh with match moved camera data.
Houdini can import chan files for obj files.
Could you give me a bit of information about the exported chan files so I can organise them?
are they tx ty tz rx ry rz etc?
thanks a lot for any help.
John

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello John,

PhotoScan allows to import camera positions in bundler format. If you have any suggestions about other popular formats that you wish to be supported by PhotoScan import/export please name them.

PhotoScan exported chan file has the following format:
camera_number x-coord y-coord z-coord euler-x-axis euler-y-axis euler-z-axis v-fov

[pixelpusher]

Is there any chance of getting FBX export in Photoscan Pro?  We are in need of a solution to do photo reconstruction and then mapping HDR imagery back onto the geometry and it would be extremely helpful to be able to get an FBX file which contains all the camera positions, as well as a UV matte image for each cameras projected contribution to the surface projection so we can re-project our HDR imagery onto the surface of the geo in nuke.  I know it is a bit of a strange request, but we have a very strange project   THANKS!

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello pixelpusher,

Is FBX the only format that suits your project or there are any alternatives with more open formats?

[ssontech]

Note that there is now an exporter from SynthEyes to PhotoScan. See http://www.ssontech.com