Guess the up vector

[Arnage]

When starting a project the initial orientation seems quite random. On the other hand the input photos are almost always right side up. If by default the average of the up vectors of the photos is used as the initial up vector of the world the orientation should make more sense.

This would only have a minor, though noticeable, effect on usability, but as far as I can see it should also be quite easy to implement.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello Arnage,

There are three instruments for the coordinate system orientation definition in PhotoScan:
1) using Reference data to set up the coordinate system.
2) using Rotate Object tool.
3) using of Python scripts for custom solutions.

Since there are a lot of different possibilities of the shooting scenarios, it is not possible to predict every option. And even some single option is implemented, it wouldn't work in any other cases.

[Arnage]

True and when you use one of those methods you'll get better results for sure, but they take time, so it seems to me that a slightly smarter default orientation could still be helpful.

Additionally, considering how common orientation sensors are in modern cameras it seemed like using this data is a logical potential avenue to improve the default orientation. Even if it only helps in a a portion of the cases it wouldn't do any harm either, as you could still use the methods you mentioned afterwards.

[Alexey Pasumansky]

Hello Arnage,

I fully understand your point, and assume that in some cases such approach could work.

But the problem is that there could be a lot of different capturing scenarios and cameras, so, for example, combination of landscape and portrait orientation can be used, also not every camera is writing the information about sensor rotation and so on.
However, if we find any solution that will provide "correct" coordinate system axis orientation in the most of cases without any referencing information, we will surely implement that.

[Hamish]

From the perspective of a user of Photoscan Standard only the Rotate Object tool is available, the tool works great for the fine adjustment to orientation - it would be a great improvement if you could change the orientation (on a right click menu?) in steps of say 90 degrees in any particular direction, 180 degrees vertical rotate would work well for me as most models produced from photocscan have top/bottom confusion.