16.12. camera_solve

The camera_solve tool takes as input a set of images acquired with a camera, and finds each camera’s pose (position and orientation). If ground control points are provided, the resulting set of cameras is transformed to be in a desired coordinate system. For examples and an overview, see Section 10.

This tool is a wrapper around the Theia structure-from-motion software (http://theia-sfm.org/), and its goal is create camera models which can later be used with ASP’s bundle adjustment (Section 16.5) and stereo (Section 3).

The camera calibration passed with the --calib-file option should be a .tsai pinhole camera model file in one of the formats compatible with ASP. Our supported pinhole camera models are described in Section 20.1.

One can use a set of estimated camera positions to register camera models in world coordinates. This method is not as accurate as using ground control points but it may be easier to use. To do this, use the --camera-positions parameter to bundle_adjust via the --bundle-adjust-params option similar to the example line below. If you see the camera models shifting too far from their starting positions try using the --camera-weight option to restrain their movement.

This tool will generate two .tsai camera model files in the output folder per input image. The first file, appended with .tsai, is in a local coordinate system and does not include optimizations for intrinsic parameters but it may be useful for debugging purposes. The second file, appended with .final.tsai, contains the final solver results. If ground control points or estimated camera positions were provided, then the second file will be in a global coordinate system.

To customize the options passed to Theia, edit the flag file which is saved in each output folder and pass it back to camera_solve via --theia-flagfile, or use the option --theia-overrides.

A related tool is theia_sfm (Section 16.66).

16.12.1. Example

camera_solve                                                \
  --bundle-adjust-params '--camera-positions nav.csv        \
  --csv-format "1:file 12:lat 13:lon 14:height_above_datum" \
  --camera-weight 100.0'                                    \
  <other options>

16.12.2. Usage

camera_solve [options] <output folder> <input images>

16.12.3. Command-line options

-h, --help

Display this help message.

--datum <string>

The datum to use when calibrating. Default is WGS84.

--calib-file <filename>

Path to an ASP compatible pinhole model file containing camera model information. The position and pose information will be ignored. If you want to use a unique file for each input image, pass a space separated list of files surrounded by quotes.

--gcp-file <filename>

Path to a ground control point file. This allows the tool to generate cameras in a global coordinate system.

--bundle-adjust-params <string>

Additional parameters (in single quotes) to pass to the bundle_adjust tool.

--theia-overrides <string>

Override any option in the auto-generated Theia flag file. Set as "--option1=val1 --option2=val2 ...".

--theia-flagfile <filename>

Path to a custom Theia flagfile to use settings from. File paths specified in this file are ignored.

--overwrite

Recompute any intermediate steps already completed on disk.

--reuse-theia-matches

Pass Theia’s computed interest point matches to bundle adjustment instead of recreating them (using potentially different methods).

--suppress-output

Reduce the amount of program console output.