Agisoft Photoscan as a camera tracker extraordinare

[Pooby]

Hi, just a tip.

I wonder if anyone else has tried this. ( shocked that it worked. Hence the post!)

Feed a video (sequence of Jpegs) of a moving camera shot into Agisoft Photoscan.

It generates not only a mesh, but all the camera positions for each frame.

( when you've got the cameras aligned, dont use ALL the frames to generate the point cloud and mesh or it will take ages) ( If there is not much parallax in the shot, you can also add extra frames at the end from different angles to give it more of a sense of the 3d nature of the scene. then finally delete those cameras as you don't need them)

When exported as an FBX, its simple ( 1-2 mins work .. 6 nodes max ) in ICE to make a camera that follows each Photoscan camera frame.
So you get a detailed mesh of the scene, with a camera moving through it, perfectly aligned. it took me a few attempts to work out why it wasn't aligning properly, (needed to check 'fix calibration' in the camera calibration tab in Photoscan, and change the aspect ratio in Softimage) but when it finally did, the results were awesome. The track was faultless ( => Syntheyes) and totally aligned to the mesh on every frame.

It makes adding CGI stuff to the scene a breeze as you know exactly where stuff is, and have a superb shadow caster, catcher etc, or even a mesh to meddle with and composite back in.

If anyone's interested, I'll do a tutorial when I have time.

[rray]

Surprised too, I thought it would need pictures taken from more angles than along a camera path. Good to know. I guess you can always have additional ones for matching and not use them in the camera path later.

Thanks for sharing the tip - I'd be interested in a tutorial, as it hasn't been done before.

[Bullit]

That is very nice to know Pooby, thanks. A tuto would be nice too.

[Rork]

Ha,

That's a purpose I never thought of with Photoscan. Nice find, and thanks for sharing this nugget

And yes, a small list of steps would be appreciated.

Oh... Nice to see you still lurking the forum btw....

rob

[scaron]

@Pooby, ya, we have used it before over the years to create geo from plates and to use the camera(s) as a matchmove. Without other witness cams there probably is some distortion which isn't accurate but works in camera space. In fact I feel it works better when you have less info than some other tracking softwares, but that is just my guess.

[druitre]

Sounds brilliant Paul. Wonder if it could handle the fisheye footage we're matchmoving atm. Very hard nut to crack, we've been spending too much time on it as it is (Syntheyes and 3Dequalizer). Gonna give it a shot tomorrow.

Cheers,
Jasper