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What's New in PhotoModeler 6
Accident Reconstruction
Photogrammetry in accident reconstruction divides into three areas: surveying of existing scenes, reconstruction of vehicle crush and reconstruction of old scenes from existing photography. A number of the new features apply to all three areas and some assist one area more than another.
First we'll discuss those features changed or added that apply in more than one area:
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Automatic processing: to get 3D data PhotoModeler needs to 'process' the photo markings and references - in PhotoModeler 5 you had to manually choose processing, more over you had to know when it was appropriate to do so for the first time. Now in PhotoModeler 6 processing occurs automatically and in the background. As you are referencing and working with your project, the data will automatically become 3d and stay accurately 3D.
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3D View Feedback: three new features in the 3D Viewer assist with determining project quality and for explaining the results to clients and the court. The two features that are useful for demonstration purposes are "Point Rays" and "Station Images". These two features work in concert too. The first shows the light ray from one or more points to all the camera stations where it was marked (great for checking angles) and the second feature replaces the camera station symbol with a geometrically correct image and perspective center. |
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New Printing and Output: Now print Photographs with marks, Tables and 3D Views. Views can be printed at different resolutions to an installed Windows printer, to a file or to the Windows clipboard.
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Camera Database and automatic camera matching: store your calibrated cameras in a central database so you don't have to search for them on disk. Moreover if the images files from your camera contain EXIF data (which most do), when you load these images they will automatically match the camera in the database so no explicit camera loading is required. Makes starting up projects so much faster! |
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3D View Point Quality: The third 3D viewer improvement is the display of error ellipsoids. These give the probabilty surface of a point's position and so you can tell very quickly visually which points are most accurate and if there is a direction they are more accurate in. |
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Improved Referencing: The act of referencing is key in PhotoModeler projects. With referencing you are telling the program what marks (points, edges, cylinders, curves) are the same across photos. We redesigned this mode with the goals of both increased flexibility and improved ease of use. |
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New Measure Pane: Measurements are key to accident reconstruction work. The Measure Pane is now a "rolling tape" style with all your measurements in one session shown. You can also copy and paste from this pane into your other applications. |
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Revamped Tables: Tables build and sort much more quickly. Tables are now generated on demand and along with user stored table-layouts you can get to your data much more quickly. There are new 2D point mark and line tables. And a few nice new features such as grouping and frozen columns.
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Revamped User Interface: There are a number of user interface changes to make the program more consistent and easier to use. Some of these are: window panes, new toolbar look, streamlined photo visibility, new property/add/remove dialogs, status bar info and feedback, pop up status panes, etc. |
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Installable User Interfaces: We can fine tune and reduce the user interface (menus and toolbars) to just those tools you need. This is a great option for training and to help new departmental users work with a reduced and consistent program.
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Scene and Vehicle Reconstruction
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New Exports: there are a few export changes but the most interesting one is the KML export to Google Earth. Google Earth is the free geographic-based satellite photo viewer available for download from Google. You can complete a road mapping project in PhotoModeler and export so that it is laid on top of the ortho-photo for the true location in Google Earth. Google Earth is a very new tool but it may become an important tool for presentation of data to clients or to the court. View this flash video(3MB) to see an example. |
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Improved Orientation: often in road scenes you end up with non-ideal positions and angles for the photography - this is the nature of the restrictions inherent of this type of project. The orientation stage of processing, which estimates the positions and angles of the photos is more robust in these situations. |
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Imports: in PhotoModeler 5 we had control point import - in PhotoModeler 6 this has been generalized to a whole new feature called 'Imports'. You can still import control point files from total stations, etc. but you can now also import drawings or models created in another program into PhotoModeler. You can use to combine data, to do texturing, or to show a model in context with proper projection as this illustration shows. |
And features carried over from PhotoModeler 5 that help with accident reconstruction work:
- Inverse Camera (so you can work with archive photos with unknown camera),
- accurate 3d reconstruction algorithms,
- subpixel target marker,
- powerful 3d viewer,
- curves,
- surfaces (polygonal and curved),
- photo-texturing of models in export and 3d viewer,
- native support for film and digital images,
- automated camera calibration,
- coordinate system transformation (scale, translate, rotation),
- photo projections,
- fully integrated pixel quality ortho-photos, and
- Project Merge to combine scenes (good for long road scenes).
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« Back to What's New in PM6
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