So you want to 3D map an ancient mayan pyramid in dense jungle?

[mwillis]

So you want to 3D map an ancient Mayan pyramid in dense jungle?  Check out our work (jump to page 21+):  https://www.academia.edu/9624997/The_2014_Season_of_the_Chan_Chich_Archaeological_Project

You can also see the full report here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13848478/CCAP-2014-Interim-Report.pdf

-Mark

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello Mark,

Thanks for sharing, nice work!

So you've used more than 1,5 thousands images for this project?

[mwillis]

Thanks Alexey.  That is correct.  I used about 1,800 images on that work  On other ground based projects I've used more than 4,500 images.  You just have to be creative about the use of chunks.  The most difficult part is actually thinking the image collection through and understand one's camera and lenses.

[Kiesel]

Hello Mark,

fascinating project, well done!

I think the biggest problem is to concentrate yourselve for every photograph taken and allways have enough overlap. Do you have to reshoot some segments because of lost alignement, gapes?
What do you think of the new fisheye support of PhotoScan would you use it for such a project?

What have you done with the texture, because I think even a 16k texture is not enough for such a large project?


Karsten

[mwillis]

Thanks Karsten. What I do to minimize reshooting is that I overshoot.  For this project I ended up shooting everything about four times.  Processing this much data in the field is problematic.  Most of the processing ends up happening when I get back.  A reshoot would involve traveling thousands of mines and a lot of cash.  In this particular model, one side of the mound was very sparsely mapped.  The angle was just too steep to safely walk with a pole (and poisonous snakes).

The new fisheye support is amazing.  We collected a bunch of data in Peru a while back that was barely useable.  After processing it with the new settings we had greatly improved results.

As for the texture, I typically break the model into several seamlessly OBJs and render a texture of 29k x 29k.  Yes, it chokes my computer but works.

Take care,

Mark

[Kiesel]

Thanks Mark for interesting answer!
(and with the poisonous snakes I get the feeling of the jungle)

Karsten