[ptx] HUGIN/Autopano/Enblend/suggestions

[Pablo d'Angelo]

On Sat, 13 Mar 2004, Ute Karsten Kiessling wrote:

> But now I found the HUGIN-Project and I'am very impressed from your work
> on HUGIN, Enblend and autopano, congratulation! In HUGIN I was surprised
> over the exact and easy setting and finetune of the controlpoints. (I
> only missed or have not found the option to rotate the pictures or tile
> the window horizontaly).

I didn't have a need for that so far, since I usually rotate the pictures
with jpegtran, as soon as I download them from the camera.

> My suggestions:
> 
> 1) Enblend
> 
> Uses multilayer tiff where every image have the size of the full
> panorama/mosaic (requirements: fast computer, lots of RAM). This could
> be impossible or time and RAM consuming on large projects . But it
> should be possible to do the same with GEOTIFF's, where every GEOTIFF
> have only the size of itselve but it know its position. "It is based on
> the standard TIFF image format with extra header tags used to store
> various types of georeferencing information such as image extents and
> projection system."
> (a first link is: http://remotesensing.org/geotiff/geotiff.html)

Actually, nona already outputs such tiff files (no need for geotiff, the
normal tiff standart already defines the needed tags), its just enblend
which doesn't handle them. As I'd like to add enblend's blending to nona,
this won't be a big problem I hope.

Max Lyons seems to have optimized the memory requirements of enblend quite a
bit. Maybe he can provide you with his modified enblend.

> 2) HUGIN/autopano
> 
> An alternative surface to manage panoramas without setting
> controlpoints, horizontaly tiled like this in realviz stitcher. A window
> with the images to stitch and a stitching window. In the stitching
> window you place images in an overlapping position to match visual
> features in each of the images. With this definition of the position and
> overlapping area HUGIN/autopano should be able to stitch it even for
> difficult panoramas.

Hmm, the algorithm as it is implemented in autopano isn't suitable for this
task out of the box. While it could be interesting to write such
functionality, I don't have the time to add that in the near future.

> BTW: Have you trieded to contact Helmut Dersch to get the sourcecode of
> PTSticher and all other stuff?

While I haven't tried personally, I know that some members of the list tried
without success. Anyway, I plan to replace PTStitcher with an improved
version of nona soon.

ciao
  Pablo