My Autopano Pro forum

I also very often have these issues when shooting 360x180. I almost always use "customized fine tuner" to get even better rms, but i still get these problems with tiles, planks and other objects with similar patterns.

richardhc wrote:

I am using a carefully calibrated nodal-ninja pano head and the images are razor sharp - but still Autopano has glitches with tiles.

The ground near to the tripod legs is often the closest and thus the most difficult part to stitch in a spherical pano. There are unavoidable parallax errors on the source images corners (rectangular format fisheye images) or near the image circle (circular fisheyes.)

One reason: fisheye lenses so called No Parallax Point is not a point but a segment ! A quick and dirty proof for that: when you are watching the lens from the side you can see that the NP"P" moves forward.

An other possible reason: "different fisheye lenses distort images differently, and the manner of distortion is referred to as their mapping function." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisheye_le … g_function There are actually many species of fisheyes: equidistant, orthographic, equisolid (but alas no stereographic ones.) This probably precludes a perfect "lens distortion adjustment" (ask Alexandre for more details...).

Workarounds:
- uses Smartblend rather than Multiband
- take more shots
- use APP circular crop tool
- use viewer pitch max value to hide the nadir region.

Last edited by GURL (2008-03-24 12:01:43)

I also use smartblend and this issue can happen anywhere on the image, not just close to zenith or nadir. It just so happens that most of the time the tiled objects are on the floor or ceiling :]

See the attached screenshots.

These were difficult photos beause there is no texture in the ceiling or tiles, but APP was able to correctly place, rotate and zoom each image, it just wasnt able to make the details line up nicely.

Last edited by DrSlony (2008-03-24 16:41:12)

richardhc wrote:

I am using a carefully calibrated nodal-ninja pano head and the images are razor sharp - but still Autopano has glitches with tiles.

If the scene is a non-repeating pattern, like grass or branches, Autopano pro rarely misses.

In selecting control points I have tried capturing large groups of tiles and small areas of just one tile - but the glitches appear in the final product anyway.

Planked decking has the same problem, always at the seam between two images. If the tiles have a random pattern on them (like marble) this is not a problem.

It would be great if someone could help me find a solution to this as these repairs take time to correct.

It's not clear to me whether this is a problem particularly related to tiles, planks etc. or whether it's just that easier to spot the issue where there are such features in the stitched image?

I thought I might use some blue painters tape to make small crosses at several points and then use the stamp tool in photoshop to remove them from the image.  I'll have to try it out.

I just rcvd my NNL5, leveler, Sigma 10mm f/2.8 fisheye, and Canon 40D so I am still figuring things out.

I do use Smartblend rather than Multiband
Taking more shots does not correct the problem
I do use the APP circular crop tool
I know the focal point shifts on fisheye lenses but the "glitches" happen even in areas far away from the camera

The problem with CP targets is that in APP you can't pinpoint one CP. I would not need tape on the floor I can easily see the intersection of the tiles and could - if it were possible in APP - click to put a single CP on that intersection. I have always wished there was some way to put just one very important control point in the images. Sort of a very heavily weighted "this point IS the same point in both images and MUST be aligned". Then all I would need to do is add that point to a couple of intersections of the tiles and the image would align better.

This would also help with sea-level horizon glitches (which are also common in APP).

The select and grab method of CP insertion on APP is a great feature but I've never understood why a simple "insert one" CP should be excluded from the program.

With or without this APP remains my champion stitching program - I just downloaded the latest PTGui Pro, dragged in a 21 image panorama and got scrambled eggs. I dropped the same images into APP and presto - a perfect stitch and render.

But back to the tile problem, APP does not have this problem with non-repeating patterns and figures out exactly how to match branches and grass blades and palm fronds to perfection. It's the identical repeating pattern that gives it a problem.