Diagonally Oriented Cameras

[CommonGibbon]

Hey, I'm looking for some tips on how to arrange an imaging setup! At current I am achieving acceptable results with a regular grid setup and a diagonal/checkerboard grid setup. I prefer to use the checkerboard grid because it allows me more spacing between my cameras and therefore a wider region of coverage, however one of my coworkers believes that the checkerboard grid will make for tougher match-finding. My coworker believes that the software should have an easier time of finding matches between cameras in cases where the most relevant cameras are located to the left/right or up/down rather than on a diagonal, which is what would be the case in a checkerboard setup. I've attached a few images describing the setups I'm talking about:


Regular grid Checkerboard Grid
I've drawn lines to represent what I imagine as the software search path to find the most relevant camera. If the software searches in a regular grid, I can see how the checkerboard search would at minimum be less efficient but, at the same time, I feel like we (my co-worker and I) are projecting a human search pattern onto the software; if you just rotate the checkerboard by 45 degrees you get another regularly spaced grid:

I read the photography guide (https://www.3dflow.net/zephyr-doc/en...aphyGuide.html) and reviewed the advanced settings for the keypoint matching and the most relevant info I could find was to do with the photo ordering. In the regular grid scenario it seems I could use the 'sequential' or 'approximate grid' settings, but if I'm taking the photos row-wise, only the regular grid setting seems to makes sense for the checkerboard setup. My question is, would 3DF be able to detect the "off-axis" grid for the checkerboard setup, or would this be no better than an unordered setup? I realize that this is irrelevant if, in the checkerboard setup, the cameras on the horizontal and vertical axis have a high degree of overlap, so lets assume that they have ~50-60% overlap.

Sorry if this was a bit long-winded, thanks for your time!

[Andrea Alessi]

Hi,

zephyr uses a bunch of different techniques to be smart in the neighbours search.

But basicallly, if you keep shooting images as you move, you can safely leave the default settings and it will absolutetly work with any of those paths you described. If instead you move a lot, take a picture, move again, take a picture, go back, etc, then yes, you may need to select unordered.

Given what you say, i think you can be safe with the approximate grid setting. That is actually what i do generally, i only switch to unordered only if zephyr fails orientation of many images (and if i see they are shot in a very random order).