Regard3D - Free, open source photogrammetry software

[Rob Martens]

I've hemmed and hawed for a few days about where exactly to post this, but finally decided to just make a dedicated thread and get it over with.

Regard3D[www.regard3d.org] is a free, open source photogrammetry tool available for Windows, OS X and Linux. I stumbled over it a few days back, and although I don't have any finished workshop content to show off just yet, I'm optimistic based on what I've seen from the software so far.

Regard is free for commercial work just as much as non-commercial, and patent free (to the best of the author's knowledge) since he's gone out of his way to avoid David Lowe's SIFT feature extraction algorithm, which many such programs use. OpenMVG, one of the base libraries Regard depends on, also uses it by default, but the developer stripped it out and implemented alternative solutions. Nonetheless, as is customary on the internet, I'll remind everyone that I am not a lawyer, so don't assume I know what I'm talking about regarding software patent law.

To use Regard, Windows and Mac users can download binaries from the project's site. If you're running Linux instead, I'm sorry to say you'll have to build from source. There's a Github repo[github.com] for the code, and build instructions are on the project's website[www.regard3d.org].

Once you have a copy of the software itself, you'll then need a camera sensor size database to go with it. OpenMVG provides one, so I'm not sure why a copy isn't shipped with Regard by default, but you can grab it from its own Github repository[github.com] easily enough. You'll want to put sensor_database.csv in the main Regard3D directory, alongside the main executable. Once that's in place, the program should launch without complaining, and you can start with the tutorial[www.regard3d.org].

If your camera's not in the database, you can add it yourself; research your camera's sensor size online, and find either the exact dimensions in millimeters, or the 1/x.y" spec which you can get real measurements out of using this chart[en.wikipedia.org]. Find the width (not diagonal) and add your camera to the database following the format you see for the other entries.

I have hope that sooner or later I'll be able to put together a guide or at least sample Destination using Regard3D that I can share, but in the meantime I thought at least a few people would find this software as interesting as I did.

[Ryusho Yosei]

I wanted to use this really badly, but since I have a Gopro Hero 4 Silver, I just can't get it to work right, even if I tell it what My camera situation is it seems, but thats probably because the hero 4 has several different image sizes to choose from, or maybe I was trying too large of an image, though I wish I could take images, scale them down, and use those, but then it looses all camera information and can't be used >.<