vertical camera orientaiton

[piotrus3333]

virtual camera parameters will not match real world lens 1:1.
too many factors to emulate: lens distortion, lens breathing, tilt shift...
and without documented site survey nobody will be able to tell how good cgi is matched anyway.
in london we do a lot of AVRs (accurate visual representation) - that means 10-20 points measured for every photo backplate. some of them 2m or 2km from camera.
there is aprox cam location and parameters are your last thing to worry about - points in 3D must meet points on the photo - it's all about that. more like reverse engineering than starting with solid solution.

[OPEN_RANGE]

That's cool and good info. Thanks for adding. Here in a small but nevertheless valuable national historic landmark district I seem to be more concerned with accuaracy of match to backplate than most others. Clients, architects don't want to be bothered with the details. There is however often accusations of miss representation by applicants and by those opposed to any given project. I wish there was a standard and have worked toward suggested how to implement that, without much traction.

Agree camera position is probably least important. In my experience moving the 3D camera around a bit horiz or vertically has minimal affect, although best to start with as close to real position as possible. Moving the camera target, horizontal or verticle, and focal length have much greater impact and importance to matching.

I often employ a survey company and get a stamped drawing for import into max. Even the surveyors will often refuse to go and suvey spot elevation and tell me just to pick the points off of thier 2' contour topo maps.

Is ther a published standard you work to that you could point me to? Or provide link to?
(Really had no intention of opening up such a can of worms)

[theedge]

If you really need to be very accurate an option would be to use a camera matching tool.
I used to do this with syntheyes for stills. You just need a couple of photographs and some surveyed points. It's easy, very accurate, and gives you the exact cameras positions.
I have not renewed my syntheyes license in years and no longer do it that way because frankly it's overkill for 99.9% of the jobs. With a little experience eyeballing the placement of the camera is quicker and easier. Knowing just the used focal length is usually enough.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Agreed and thanks. Your input has been valuable and very helpful to me!

[piotrus3333]

one thing i noticed - Camera Tracker utility from Max seems better than Camera Match in actual matching.
and Camera Match fails quite often with TS lens photos.