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Photoscan 1.2 version available today


cdschroer

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I wanted to let folks know that the 1.2 version of Photoscan is now available.  It's been in Beta for a while, but it's status just changed to be the currently shipping version.  It is a free upgrade.

 

Download it here: http://www.agisoft.com/downloads/installer/

 

Full change log is here: http://www.agisoft.com/pdf/photoscan_changelog.pdf

 

Carla

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  • 5 weeks later...

I've tried the new version 1.2.1 and it has a lot of features that will take a little while to become more familiar with.  It has a new file structure that makes the .psz file much smaller in size and faster to save.  Much of the source data that doesn't change when the model is being processed is now saved in a separate folder that Photoscan creates when you open a new project.  This means you can duplicate chunks and process them with different settings without creating an enormous file that sometimes used to take several minutes to save.

 

The alignment step in v. 1.2.1 offers a "highest" setting that produced more accurate alignment of the images for the first project I tried it out on.  The projection errors were significantly lower after the alignment step and before optimization than I could previously achieve after optimization using the older Pro version (1.1.6).  I still had to optimize to get the overall average projection error below 0.3 pixels, however, which makes me wonder if projection errors are being measured the same way or differently than the older version.  At any rate, optimization to achieve <0.3 pixel error using v. 1.2.1 was much faster and required far fewer iterations than with the older versions.

 

There are new workflows to create tiled models and orthomosaics, and new measurement tools that I look forward to trying out.  The quality of orthophotos seems very much improved.  I'm seeing far fewer artifacts and better resolution in the orthophotos I've generated using v. 1.2.1.  Those are my early impressions and hope others will add theirs.

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I made a comparison between two meshes generated using the same set of 30 images of a petroglyph panel, using CloudCompare (screenshot attached).  They're quite close, although the mesh generated using the older version (1.1.6) included some additional areas at the margins of the model (green shading) that weren't included in the mesh generated using the newer v. 1.2.1.  As mentioned above, the new version produces a more accurate initial alignment and requires fewer steps for optimization.  As a result v. 1.2.1 also retains far more of the tie-point projections, so there's less risk of throwing away image data that could otherwise be used due to insufficient tie point projections.  I used these settings:

 

V. 1.1.6:

Sparse point cloud:  high, 26,289 points (after optimization)

Dense point cloud:  Ultra high, 67,085,281 points

Mesh:  high, 13,491,380 faces

 

V. 1.2.1:

Sparse point cloud:  highest, 92,262 points (after optimization)

Dense point cloud:  Ultra high, 66,451,205 points

Mesh:  high, 13,290,240 faces

 

Also worth noting for those who use multiple platforms that include older operating systems that don't support v. 1.2.1, is that PSZ projects created or saved using v. 1.2.1 can't be opened later by v. 1.1.6 or earlier versions.  Therefore, you'll have to make sure v. 1.2.1 is supported by all the platforms you intend to use.

 

post-98-0-55991600-1450560946_thumb.jpg

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for this Taylor!  We have been doing some experimentation also, and overall are quite happy with the new version. There are some handy new features as well.  I don't have anything to post about this yet, other than to echo that we are seeing much more accurate, lower error aligned projects, even before removing bad points using the optimization workflow.  

 

Carla

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I need to correct what I said about the compatibility of files saved using v. 1.2.x, which gives you two file format options.  The newer file format is PSX, which isn't compatible with older versions of Photoscan (v. 1.1.x and older).  You can still choose to save files in the PSZ (archive) format, which I believe you should be able to open using older versions of Photoscan (I haven't confirmed this yet since I don't have both versions of Photoscan running on the same platform).

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