Help please!!!!

[Davidk]

I am brand new at this

I just received ny NN5 and nikon 10.5 lens two days ago. *I am shooting with a D300. *I am using PTGui trial version as my code has not yet arrived for my purchased version

Yesterday, I did two interior test pans without the zenith or nadir shots and they stitched perfectly

I moved my camera to another location that has a tile floor so i can learn how to do the nadir shot and everything went haywire in ptgui

I found the right camera setting on the NN5 so the camera rotales around the nodal point. *The camera was on a leveled tripod with the proper 60 degree rotation setting to take 6 shots with proper overlap. Nothing that i know of had been changed after my fist two tests

After loading the images, I used the align images tool. The preview editor comes up and everything is a mess. *I run the optimizer set to heavy*+lens shift and I get a message saying it failed. *Average control point dist is 593, *min is 67, max is 1935. * Looking at the control points manually, they look perfctly alaigned to my inexperienced eye

I even tried stiching without the zenith and nadir shots withe the same bad results.

I can't figure out why they won't stitch properly or what changed between my first two sucessful tests and the third.

Suggestions?

[TheOldFart]

David,

Have you tried deleting the 'worst' control points and re-optimising. On the PTGui menu: Control Points ---> Delete Worst Control Points?
Have you tried deleting all control points and re-running the stitch?

Cheers
Tony

[Davidk]

Yes, Tony. It would not delete the worst for some reason--i dont remember why. Either way, according to the numbers, they are all bad even though they look good to me visually. I tried restiching, i even reshot the exact scene with the same results

Update, i tried an out door scene with the same camera settings (other than expsure) and the same PTGui process and it worked. I am very confused

[nick fan]

Yes, Tony. It would not delete the worst for some reason--i dont remember why. Either way, according to the numbers, they are all bad even though they look good to me visually. I tried restiching, i even reshot the exact scene with the same results

Update, i tried an out door scene with the same camera settings (other than expsure) and the same PTGui process and it worked. I am very confused

Does your scene have many repetitive patterns? Ptgui only recongize localized features and does not know which feature belongs to which part of pattern.
If you supply sample images, we can better know the reason.

Nick

[John Houghton]

Update, i tried an out door scene with the same camera settings (other than expsure) and the same PTGui process and it worked. I am very confused

When you have received the license code, you will be able to register PTGui and then it will be possible to save your successful project to a .pts file and apply that as a template to your images that won't stitch using the File->Apply template option. This will help to get a good stitch, but meanwhile.....

When the Align Images function has failed, do the following:

1. Enter Advanced mode via the button on the right of the Project Assistant tab. Select the Source images tab and check that ALL the thumbnail images are in the same orientation - landscape OR portrait. The orientation sensor in the camera may give inconsistent information for the zenith or nadir. Correct any errant images in Photoshop.
2. On the Lens Details tab, reset the focal length to the nominal value (10.5mm), and reset the lens correction parameters and lens shift parameters all to 0.
3. On the Image Parameters tab, set the yaw, pitch, and roll parameters to their known nominal values:
The yaw (horizontal rotation) values will be 0,60,120.... for the horizontal row of 6 shots
The pitch values will be 0 (or maybe you tilted the camera up or down 5 or 10 degrees, say)
The roll will be 0 or -90 for all the shots, depending on orientation of the images -portrait or landscape.
The zenith will have pitch=90
The nadir will have pitch=-90
4. Display the Panorama Editor window, and on the Projection menu option, select Spherical: 360x180 equirectangular
The panorama image should now look fairly reasonable. You might need to rotate the nadir and zenith images so that they align properly with the horizontal row. This can be done by adjusting the yaw parameters of those images (it will be a multiple of 60 degrees), or by click/dragging the images sideways (select the image to be moved by clicking on the blue "Edit individual images" icon).
5. Go to the control points tab. Check for control points assigned to parts of the tripod or pano head and delete them.
You only want points between neighbouring images, i.e. between 0-1 and 1-2, and 2-3 in the case of the horizontal row. You don't want points between 0-2, 2-4 etc. (the image numbers are rendered in bold on the tab headings for images sharing control points). Delete any inappropriate points found.
6. Having done these checks for all images, it should now be safe to go to the optimizer tab and run Optimize.

What happens next depends on the report from the optimizer, but hopefully you should get a good result if all the control points are accurately assigned to identical features that have not moved between shots. (Avoid control points on anything likely to move between shots, such as clouds, vehicles, people, tree branches in the wind).

John

[Davidk]

John, thanks for that. It still came out pretty bad. It will be about 3 days until i can upload the files because i am traveling. I wll be back in touch about wednesday

[hindenhaag]

David,

You often get a mess when the lens setting is not right. Check this first, may be you have to deactivate "automatic" lens recognition. You can see you messing up in preview. Sometimes pics turn around. All pics have to be in the same orientation, also the Zenith and Nadir shot. May be you have to turn off camera orientation.

Cheers
Heinz

[badders]

Have you tried using your first set of "good" images as a template? Save the project file from the first set as a template, load the six images around from the problem set and apply the template to stitch, then add the zenith / nadir and some manual control points to stitch.

[John Houghton]

Save the project file from the first set as a template,

David is using the trial version of PTGui, which doesn't permit saving the project file to disc (unless he has by now licensed it). He could get round this by running a project to stitch the "good" images and then replacing each of the images with those from the new set (via the option on the Source Images tab), and then delete all the control points. Assign new points manually and then optimize.
.
John