[ptx] Autopano-sift -> Hugin -> Enblend Workflow

[One of the Sydenham Family]

Chris Cothrun wrote:

> I'm curious about how you got Autopano-soft working under Windows.
> I've tried and run into all sorts of dependancy problems that I never
> did get sorted out. A kind list reader even sent me some .dlls that
> were working for him but these didn't work for me either. I was
> playing around with colinux at the same time and ended up using that
> to get Autopano-sift running.

I messed around for a while to get autopano-sift running on Windows, but now I 
use it all the time. It never (well not yet anyway) gives me any false control 
pairs and I find it much easier to add a few if I think I want to rather than 
remove phantoms. Sebastian will possibly release a new version next month some 
time that should be much simpler to get running, but if you want to try out what 
I have done then you can get a copy of the files I use at 
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/syd/kid/Panorama/Autopano-sift_IanSydenham.zip
This includes only the contents of the .../autopano-sift/bin folder that would 
be created by a "standard" installation of autopano-sift. The source and 
documentation files are not included and if you need them then they are in the 
proper release at http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~nowozin/autopano-sift/

All the files in Autopano-sift.zip need to be unzipped a single folder. Copy 
your image files into the same folder and run autopano-sift from a command line. 
I know that it works on my PC but it is not tested on anything else so best of 
luck. I think that the original executable for autopano-sift was called 
autopano-sift.exe, but I changed that at some time to autopano.exe. Can't 
remember why I did it, but that is how it is right now.

> 
>>2. Run a batch file I have created
>>(C:\Program Files\autopano-sift\bin\AutopanoIt.cmd) to create the Hugin Project
>>File (normally Hugin.pto). The batch file checks to make sure that I have got
>>some files to work with, creates the autopano key files and then calls
>>autopano-sift to create the hugin file.
> 
> 
>>15. I delete the 0 byte file nona.tiff (leaving nona.tif for later use) then
>>start enblend using a batch file I have created
>>C:\Program Files\autopano-sift\bin\EnblendIt.cmd.
>>The batch file looks for tiff files in the directory C:\Program
>>Files\autopano-sift\tmp and runs enblend to create a JPG file enblended.tif.
>>This works not only with multiple layer tiff files, but also with multiple tiff
>>files (I have not tried it with a mix of both). It then uses image magic
>>"convert.exe" to convert this to a (smaller) PNG file and deletes the enblended
>>tiff file.
> 
> 
> Any chance of sharing these batch files you've created?

I've put a copy of the batch files at 
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/syd/kid/Panorama/Autopano-sift+enblend-batchFlies.zip
I am NOT a programmer so for anyone who knows what they are doing I guess that 
my solution is ugly, but it works for me and that is ultimately all I was trying 
to do.
To set it all up the files in Autopano-sift_IanSydenham.zip and 
Autopano-sift+enblend-batchFlies.zip above must have been unzipped into 
C:\Program Files\Autopano-sift\bin. You also need to create a folder C:\Program 
Files\Autopano-sift\tmp.

To use them copy the photo images into C:\Program Files\Autopano-sift\tmp, then 
double click on C:\Program Files\Autopano-sift\bin\_AutopanoIt.cmd (the _ at the 
front is so it is at the top of the file list). If you want to set a MINDIM 
parameter (as discussed in the autopano-sift documentation) then you'll need to 
start if from a command window.
Eventually you will get a Hugin.pto file that can be opened in Hugin.

To use the enblend batch file save the Hugin output tiff files in C:\Program 
Files\Autopano-sift\tmp then double click on C:\Program 
Files\Autopano-sift\bin\_EnblendIt.cmd (or _EnblendIt360.cmd for full panoramas).

If you have any problems then e-mail me and I'll try to help out, but I'm not 
really sure what *I'm* doing half the time so don't expect too much from me.


regards,

Ian Sydenham