Hello. I started some experiments with the ICE and it seems providing quite impressive results when the image overlap is quite large (20-30%) and enough unique features. I tested it with up to 60 images up to now and it works pretty well.I have problems with the images when the overlap is about 10% and/or when the images have repetitive pattern like grid or almost no pattern at all.Is it possible to help somehow the ICE with the stitching in the case it rejects some files and reports errors? The Photoshop has something like that for the Photomerge for example. It is possible to enter the expected position(s) manually in such situations.Thank you for your support,Pavel
There is a possible workaround, but it is so labor intensive that it hardly seems worth the effort. Specifically, you could:
At some point we'll improve ICE to handle this case (and the HDR case, which requires a similarly byzantine procedure).
-BryanImage Composite Editor Team
Good try :-)It seems to me hardly realizable for 500+ images.Any idea about when some improvements will come?Pavel
Hi Pavel,
Wow 500 images. I really don't think that ICE is going to give you satisfactory results for that many images. We've tuned it for small to medium ize panos in the 2 to 30 images range. With 500 images the odds of ICE getting a bad match seem pretty high. For this size project I would suggest either Autopano or PTGui. I've seen both of these products used succesfully for this size job.
-Matt
Hi Matt,thank you for your clear answer. I wanted to know whether the ICE could really replace such tools.I know the answer now. :-)Unfortunately - I got a different impression from the site: http://research.microsoft.com/IVM/HDView/ .It seems like the HD View content from 800 images and appr.4gigapixels was created by the ICE.Do you know why that site is not clear about the ICE possibilities?It's like a misleading advertising when the site does not say the panorams were actually created by tools from some other companies :-(Do I understand that correctly?Kind regards,Pavel
I'm sorry if the HDView site isn't clear that ICE wasn't used to produce those results. We didn't use tools from other companies. The HDView examples on that site were indeed produced by the same software components as ICE. However, we have some custom versions of the software that we use internally that isn't nearly as user-firendly as ICE. This has't been released externally yet.
Hmm, you probably know that old joke about the demo version, right? :-)http://www.joke-archives.com/microsoft/heaven.htmlThank you for making it clear anyway.I wish I could find such frankness on more spots.Kind regards,Pavel
<... For this size project I would suggest either Autopano or... >
Autopano collappses most of the (10-20 images) panoramas we take unless direct links between the images are directly provided. ICE does the job correctly. So far for our (quite boring) images only ICE and Autostitch work correctly without manual intervention.
odissey
Autopano collappses most of the (10-20 images) panoramas we take unless direct links between the images are provided. ICE does the job correctly. So far for our (quite boring) images only ICE and Autostitch work correctly without manual intervention.
What about stitching subsets, e.g. 50 images, then stitching the stitched images, then stitching the ...
Would that work? Or is there a significant degradation of quality (what about using TIFF exports)?
It depends on the type of 'camera motion'. If you use a planar motion for each stitch, then you can stitch the resulting images with that same or a greater planar motion. We can't currently cascade rotating motion, because as soon as one result is projected onto a sphere or cylinder then the stitching engine can't undo that type of distortion in a subsequent stitch. Unfortunately, please note, planar motion isn't appropriate for many situations. See this previous post for when the use planar motion: http://community.research.microsoft.com/forums/p/2002/2927.aspx#2927