Insight3d: Open Source Image Based Modeling

(taken from http://www.blendernation.com/2010/11/22/insight3d-open-source-image-based-modeling )

Lukas Mach is developing software that converts a series of photographs into a textured 3D model.

From the website:

insight3d lets you create 3D models from photographs. You give it a series of photos of a real scene (e.g., of a building), it automatically matches them and then calculates positions in space from which each photo has been taken (plus camera’s optical parameters) along with a 3D pointcloud of the scene. You can then use insight3d’s modeling tools to create textured polygonal model.

Basically, it hopes to be “Photosynth + Canoma”. Or “boujou + Imagemodeler”. But it’s also free and opensource (GNU AGPL 3).

The software is still in development (isn’t it always?) and Lukas needs your input to tweak it further:

But I need help: there are tons of different digital cameras and I’ve tested my app only on few of them. insight3d should be able to handle all typical cameras, but there’s some stuff in the optimization routines that has yet to be tweaked appropriately. Probably. It would be great if you could send me datasets you tried to feed into insight3d. Both the ones that worked and the ones that didn’t are imporant! If you want, download the app, read the tutorial (there’s important info on what photos should be used and where to eventually send them!), take some photos, have fun with it and please send it to me. Hope that it’ll work for you, but don’t hold your breath.

The software is available for Windows and Linux. No OSX (yet?), so I can’t tell you how well it works. If you guys could post some sample models that would be awesome!

http://insight3d.sourceforge.net/

Sounds very good!

But how can we use the results in OSM then? I will try to photograph the Cathedrale Sainte Anne in Kinshasa.

Has anybody already experiences with this tool?