As promised in my previous post, here is a how-to of using Bundler to generate 3D models for use in OSM.

My setup:

I used a fairly generic digital compact camera, a Pentax Optio S5i.
I'm running an up-to date copy of Ubuntu 9.10 (64 bit) on my Satellite L300 laptop, a really not very powerful machine.
I have followed these instructions on a 32 bit Ubuntu LiveCD to double check they work.

I'm posting this in the hope some of you may find it interesting/useful however I'm no guru on linux and if it doesn't work for you I probably won't be of much use to you in fault finding. For Windows users, I've read that this will work under cygwin but I've never tried, and, not being a Windows user myself I probably won't be trying.

Taking photos:

I went to Market Harborough town centre and took about 65 photos of the Church from various viewing points. It's best to stand well back and get as much of the object in view as possible with maximal overlap of images, not just lots of close ups where each photo overlaps a little with the next as you might do when making a panorama.

I read somewhere along the way that a photo every 15 degrees as you walk around might work well but I'm still experimenting with this and don't have any golden rules to follow. When you look at the final output of the program you can get an idea from the numbering of the ply files which photos were used and which ones weren't, this may be the best guide to you after a while.

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I recently experimented with using photogrammetry to do mapping for OSM and thought I would post the results on here.

I started by taking quite a few photos of St Dionysius church in the centre of Market Harborough using a cheap digital camera (Pentax Optio S5i).

Once I got home I spent some time experimenting with various pieces of software before settling on Bundler, http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/bundler/. It took a bit of messing, isn't exactly user friendly and the whole process can be slow, but produces some pretty good results.

The software outputs .ply files which can be opened with Blender to get an idea of how successful the bundle adjustment was. This video shows the point cloud that was created using my photos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cApFzm4KHiU

I cheated a little to get the data into a usable format for JOSM by taking a screen dump of Blender and using PicLayer to give me a guide. I then traced the building shape and positioned using a GPS trace from a previous visit.

http://yfrog.com/jv13731260p

http://yfrog.com/i390058948p

http://yfrog.com/jx68938219p

When time permits I hope to take this a little further and get a high detail map of the surrounding buildings of Market Harborough town centre done.