Export COLMAP in standard

[PLAN8]

Most Gaussian Splatting and NERF creation packages require colmap camera and pointcloud format. It transpires that only the pro version of Metashape can export this format - this seems a bit remis to me.

Please can you add the COLMAP export function into both versions? Thanks!

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello solosails,


Please check if you are able to get the desired export result from Metashape Standard 2.1.3 pre-release via File Menu -> Export Cameras dialog -> Colmap (*.txt) type.


The links to the pre-release are below:
https://download.agisoft.com/metashape_2_1_3_x64.msi
https://download.agisoft.com/metashape_2_1_3.dmg
https://download.agisoft.com/metashape_2_1_3_amd64.tar.gz

If you have any feedback related to this new feature, please let us know.

[PLAN8]

That's fantastic news - thank you for adding this. I will test, as I am sure many other excited people will do also, and report back on the findings.

Thanks again.

[PLAN8]

First test importing into Postshot went perfectly - alignment looks perfect - so far, very promising thank you!

[munch]

Thank you Alexey!
First try works fine in postshot - 

Can we expect some more detailed export options in the near future (imageformat, bitdepth, etc.)

[PLAN8]

I seem to be having problems when trying to export cameras if they are .dng (complains it cannot write to destination folder) - will experiment a bit more with this, but if someone else is able to take a look at this and see if they can recreate, that would be great - thanks.

[PLAN8]

OK, so hopefully quite a simple request, can you add the option to export a dense cloud as well as or instead of the sparse cloud?

This would allow more options to manipulate the points and even potentially completely replace them using external software. (I know this can be done post export, but it would be a handy option in some circumstances anyway. Many thanks.

One other option, it would be handy to be able not to re-export the undistorted images, if you need to make a small change that doesn't affect the distorted images - this would save a lot of time on second exports.

Otherwise, this is working great! Thank you again!

[PLAN8]

Another request if possible, is currently the points exported do not get cropped by the object bounding crop area - could this be made possible please?

With Gaussian Splatting, this is quite important, as any outlying sparse points contribute to noise or "floaters" in the splat - having a controllably isolated set of points at export is quite an import part of the pipeline.

Thanks!

[PLAN8]

I seem to be having problems when trying to export cameras if they are .dng (complains it cannot write to destination folder) - will experiment a bit more with this, but if someone else is able to take a look at this and see if they can recreate, that would be great - thanks.

Yes, this appears to be a problem - cannot write to folder when trying to export images that are DNG

[ilia]

Another request if possible, is currently the points exported do not get cropped by the object bounding crop area - could this be made possible please?

With Gaussian Splatting, this is quite important, as any outlying sparse points contribute to noise or "floaters" in the splat - having a controllably isolated set of points at export is quite an import part of the pipeline.

Thanks!

You can remove tie points before exporting. Use selection tools and just crop the area you want to leave or cut off points you don't need.

[PLAN8]

Another request if possible, is currently the points exported do not get cropped by the object bounding crop area - could this be made possible please?

With Gaussian Splatting, this is quite important, as any outlying sparse points contribute to noise or "floaters" in the splat - having a controllably isolated set of points at export is quite an import part of the pipeline.

Thanks!

You can remove tie points before exporting. Use selection tools and just crop the area you want to leave or cut off points you don't need.

Hi, nice tip thank you - only this is a destructive method - crop box would be non destructive

[spader]

Hello! Great work with the export function!

Id like to chime in and agree with PLAN8 that exporting dense cloud instead of tie points would be really useful. The usecase is that we could then generate a really nice and dense point cloud, do all the usual cleaning, filter it somewhat, which would really increase coverage in areas which otherwise are almost empty.

[PolarNick]

> Hi, nice tip thank you - only this is a destructive method - crop box would be non destructive

Hi, you can use Ctrl+Z to revert tie points removal.

[PLAN8]

good point !

[vineg]

Regarding .dng, we will fix it in 2.2.0. Thanks for telling about the problem!