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.
Ogham in 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.
Visual SfM: 3D Construction through Structure from Motion
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.
Twitter Sentiment Visualization
I recently came across an online project, that will “ estimate and visualize sentiment for short, incomplete text snippet”. Tweet Sentiment Visualization presents a visualization of basic emotional properties in a text. Focusing on Twitter, you simply add in a keyword and a detailed visual analysis is created, using Russell Model of Emotional Effect 1.
#IWD2016
Happy International Women’s Day!
Since moving to rural Ireland, I don’t celebrate International Women’s Day, like I used to. In the cities, there is always some fantastic event or party being organised. but , here in a small town in rural Ireland, its a day like any other. I have been following with great interest, the rise of feminism in Ireland, there are currently several womens rights campaigns going on in Ireland, from #WakingtheFeminists to #Repealthe8th, which I follow on social media with great interest.
For my part, I decided to practise my new GIF skills. I love History. I was always fascinated, but failed to achieve much, academically, not having a thing for numbers. In other words, I never remembered dates. I’m currently research ways to use tools such as GIF making, for educational purposes, and I love some of the history GIFs that are coming out.