Software to calculate camera position from stills

[tricky]

Many moons ago, I recall using a piece of software (the name escapes me) that calculated the relative positions and FOVs of cameras used to take a series of photographs. You needed to load the various photos into the software and pick on common points between the photos - corners of windows or tops of lamp posts etc.

The application would then calculate where the camera was positioned and determine its FOV.

These calculated cameras could then be imported into 3dsmax.

I am trying to find software that will do the same thing. I know Syntheyes and things exist, but they are mainly for camera tracking in movies (and obviously expensive).

Does anyone know of a bit of software that will do this?

[joconnell]

Syntheyes isn't that expensive - 299 for the intro version which'll do it for ya, again if you never do animation then maybe don't bother.

Free options:

Photo match in sketchup - https://help.sketchup.com/en/article/3000115
Perspective match in 3dsmax: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...1689C-htm.html

[tricky]

Syntheyes isn't that expensive - 299 for the intro version which'll do it for ya, again if you never do animation then maybe don't bother.

Free options:

Photo match in sketchup - https://help.sketchup.com/en/article/3000115
Perspective match in 3dsmax: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...1689C-htm.html

I've also just landed on the Photomodeler website which rings a bell, and from the site, it looks suitably 'old-skool"! That could be the one. Thanks for your links.

[joconnell]

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...&siteID=123112 - imagemodeller was a product that did similar things, apparently it's free with a max / maya subscription.

[Morne]

Might be overkill for your needs, but I would say +1 for Syntheyes

If you have a range of photos, you can select common points in the photos and it will work out the cam and FOV for you. It exports a maxscript that you run in max which will create the cam for you.

It can also be useful for tracking video shots of the streets and buildings when you do animation to stick into your videos

[chriserskine]

photoscan dose this pretty well.

though i think you need to export undistorted photos to match the cameras it creates.


reality capture some time in the future will support well. It dose kind of work in maya but too buggy to use at the moment for this kind of thing.

you will need to take lots of photo though. basically build a low quality mesh which you can use to align all the cameras. turn it off mesh and just cameras.