I definitely agree here. The Gigapan robot and it's Stitcher software show how easy it can be to get that initial layout with constraints - it always takes pictures on a grid, so you just have to specify how many rows there are, and suddenly you can preview the shape and content of your panorama from a grid of thumbnails.
I realize this is too constrained for many applications, but if you are taking pictures on a Nodal Ninja or other panorama head, the user could specify rows/columns and spacing fairly easily, to get started. Next, we might add the ability to have rows of different lengths, and a separate spot to put 'free' pictures like an overhead/straight down shot. Then, the control point generators could look only at overlapping pictures, and avoid the swirling knots that sometimes result from totally 'free' alignment. As a user, the way I work around this right now is using template projects. For a particular shooting pattern, I type in the orientation of each of the photos, and save the project as a template... Regards, Aron On Jun 22, 10:25 am, Tom Sharpless <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Mark > > You have put your finger on a major weakness in Hugin's stitching > flow. > > There should be an "alignment" tab that lets you see and adjust the > layout of photos, whether or not it has been "optimized". > And there should be some alignment procedures in the software, that > operate at a higher level than just minimizing the average squared > distance for all control points. > > Some progress is being made on these needs, but it has not yet come > together as a complete package offering a smooth user experience. > There is a new graphical "layout" facility, and eventually the > "panomatic" control point finder will use layout information to > improve the quality of its control points. But I don't think anybody > is working on high level alignment algorithms at present. > > It would be nice if Hugin could do automatic alignment as well as > PTGui does. I don't know what is inside, but it is clear from the > outside that PTGui's alignment algorithm has 4 or 5 major steps, the > last of which is optimization. However PTGui doesn't offer the user > any control over this procedure, or allow one to specify the starting > layout. Both of which could ultimately make for quicker and better > alignments. > > Cheers, Tom > > Some progress > > On Jun 22, 9:31 am, Markkk <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi > > > First: many thanks to all the contributers of hugin and tools. Great > > achievment! > > > Just a small usability issue: it took me a long time to figure out, > > which of the tabs corresponds to the "2. Align..." step of the > > Assistant. > > > From my [foreign language] understanding, the word "optimise" denotes > > "further refinement". An act of improving an otherwise complete > > result. A step that could even be left out for a crude first look > > (which obviously is not the case here). > > > Kepts dismissing that tab as "yeah, we can optimise later, where the > > heck is alignment?" ;-) > > > -Mark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hugin and other free panoramic software" group. A list of frequently asked questions is available at: http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx
