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Browsing posts in: Digital Artefact

Agisoft PhotoScan

blog header, with images from Agisoft Photoscan

Agisoft PhotoScan (commonly known as PhotoScan) is a professional tool for a photogrammetry pipeline. It performs photogrammetric processing of digital images and generates 3D spatial data. Agisoft Photoscan is the dominant photogrammetric software on the market, being used by a range of professions, from archaeology, cartographers to creators of virtual worlds and game developers. Unlike Visual SfM, it contains a complete program to numerous specific tasks and different types of data, and, as a novice to photogrammetric software, was easily managed, with an efficient workflow system.

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Ogham in Animation

blog header with text animation

My original idea for an animation about Ogham Stones, was to create a virtual world, where Ogham Stones that have been relocated, could be returned to their original site in a virtual world. This could be applied to Ogham Stones, in Museums and other collections. An example of this is the Ogham Stones from Ballinrannig, Co, Kerry. In the late 1700’s a collection of seven Ogham Stones and a cross slab were revealed in Ballinrannig, Smerwick Harbour, Co. Kerry, when a storm shifted the sand covering them. Lord Ventry, of Burnham House, moved six of upright Ogham Stones, and a cross slab. He placed four of the stones along with the cross slab in his driveway.

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Visual SfM: 3D Construction through Structure from Motion

blog header with text Visual sfm

From reviewing the paper The Untapped Potential of Low Cost Photogrammery in Community-Based Archaeology, it was easy to see that photogrammetry can be used as an alternative to high resolution surveying with high costs.

Traditional softcopy photogrammetric methods require the 3-D location and pose of the camera(s), or the 3-D location of ground control points to be known to facilitate scene triangulation and reconstruction. In contrast, the SfM method solves the camera pose and scene geometry simultaneously and automatically, using a highly redundant bundle adjustment based on matching features in multiple overlapping, offset images [Westoby et al 2012].

Structure from motion is the geometry of creating 3D models from 2D images. If you are interested in the maths behind SfM, visit Prof. Rob Fergus’s lecture notes on Computer Vision, or geometric vision, in particular Lecture 6 on Multiview Stereo & Structure from Motion.  It is quite interesting to see the process. Thankfully, to Wu Changchang, we don’t need to understand the mathematics behind how Structure from Motion works, to be able to use it. In his post-doc year at University of Washington Seattle, he developed Visual SfM.

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Photogrammetry Timeline

blog header history of photogrammetry

As part of my research into digital tools and community participation, I have been looking at photogrammetry. In particular because I will be using it as part of the Ogham in 3D project. I realised how little I knew about the history of photogrammetry, and wanted to delve in deeper. As a visual learner, I find just reading articles and papers, still don’t quite connect the dots for me, and constantly find myself muddled with dates and names. So, I decided to create a visual (brief) timeline of the history of photogrammetry, to get a better idea of its origins, its uses, and significance today.

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