COLMAP update notification

[Johannes Schönberger]

New major COLMAP releases will be announced on this thread.

[Johannes Schönberger]

Dear all,

I forgot to update this thread. In the meantime, COLMAP 1.1, 2.0 and 2.1 have been released with major improvements. The full list of changes can be found at https://github.com/colmap/colmap/blob/master/CHANGELOG.txt

The latest source code and executables can be found at https://github.com/colmap/colmap and https://colmap.github.io/.

Best,

Johannes

[Johannes Schönberger]

Hi everyone,

COLMAP 3.0 has been released with many new features, improvements to existing features, and many important bug fixes. Some of the highlights in this release:

- Add automatic end-to-end reconstruction tool that automatically performs

sparse and dense reconstruction on a given set of images

- Add multi-GPU dense stereo if multiple CUDA devices are available

- Add multi-GPU feature matching if multiple CUDA devices are available

- Add Manhattan-world / gravity alignment using line detection

- Add CUDA-based feature extraction useful for usage on clusters

- Add CPU-based feature matching for machines without GPU

- Add new THIN_PRISM_FISHEYE camera model with tangential/radial correction

- Add binary to triangulate existing/empty sparse reconstruction

- Add binary to print summary statistics about sparse reconstruction

- Add transitive feature matching to transitively complete match graph

- Improved scalability of dense reconstruction by using caching

- More stable GPU-based feature matching with informative warnings

- Faster vocabulary tree matching using dynamic scheduling in FLANN

- Faster spatial feature matching using linear index instead of kd-tree

- More stable camera undistortion using numerical Newton iteration

- Improved option parsing with some backwards incompatible option renaming

- Faster compile times by optimizing includes and CUDA flags

- More stable view selection for small baseline scenario in dense reconstruction

- Many more bug fixes and improvements

[Johannes Schönberger]

Hi everyone,

Given the great feedback for version 3.0, I made some improvements and bug fixes to COLMAP and just released 3.1 with the following changes:

- Add fast spatial verification to image retrieval module

- Add binary file format for sparse models by default. Old text format still

  fully compatible and possible conversion in GUI and CLI

- Add cross-platform little endian binary file reading and writing

- Faster and less memory hungry stereo fusion by computing consistency on demand

  and possible limitation of image size in fusion

- Simpler geometric stereo processing interface.

  Now geometric stereo output can be computed using a single pass

- Faster and multi-architecture CUDA compilation

- Add medium quality option in automatic reconstructor

- Many more bug fixes and improvements

This release incorporates my recent work on fast spatial verification in image retrieval "A Vote­-and­-Verify Strategy for Fast Spatial Verification in Image Retrieval".

The latest source code and executables can be found at https://github.com/colmap/colmap and https://colmap.github.io/.

Any feedback would be more than welcome.

Best,

Johannes

[Johannes Schönberger]

Hi everyone,

COLMAP 3.0 has been released with many new features, improvements to existing features, and many important bug fixes. Some of the highlights in this release:

- Fully automatic cross-platform build script (Windows, Mac, Linux)

- Add multi-GPU feature extraction if multiple CUDA devices are available

- Configurable dimension and data type for vocabulary tree implementation

- Add new sequential matching mode for image sequences with high frame-rate

- Add generalized relative pose solver for multi-camera systems

- Add sparse least absolute deviation solver

- Add CPU/GPU options to automatic reconstruction tool

- Add continuous integration system under Windows, Mac, Linux through Github

- Many more bug fixes and improvements

The latest source code and executables can be found at https://github.com/colmap/colmap and https://colmap.github.io/.

Best,

Johannes

[Johannes Schönberger]

Small correction: I meant COLMAP 3.2 and not 3.0.

[Johannes Schönberger]

Hi everyone,

COLMAP 3.3 has been released with new features, improvements to existing features, and a few bug fixes. Some of the highlights in this release:

- Add DSP (Domain Size Pooling) SIFT implementation. DSP-SIFT outperforms
  standard SIFT in most cases, as shown in "Comparative Evaluation of
  Hand-Crafted and Learned Local Features", Schoenberger et al., CVPR 2017
- Improved parameters dense reconstruction of smaller models
- Improved compile times due to various code optimizations
- Add option to specify camera model in automatic reconstruction
- Add new model orientation alignment based on upright image assumption
- Improved numerical stability for generalized absolute pose solver
- Support for image range specification in PMVS dense reconstruction format
- Support for older Python versions in automatic build script
- Fix OpenCV Fisheye camera model to exactly match OpenCV specifications

[Johannes Schönberger]

Hi everyone,

COLMAP 3.4 has been released with most notable a new command-line interface, improvements to existing features, and a several bug fixes. Some of the highlights in this release:

- Unified command-line interface: The functionality of previous executables have
  been merged into the ``src/exe/colmap.cc`` executable. The GUI can now be
  started using the command ``colmap gui`` and other commands are available
  as ``colmap [command]``. For example, the feature extractor is now available
  as ``colmap feature_extractor [args]`` while all command-line arguments stay
  the same as before. This should result in much faster project compile times
  and smaller disk space usage of the program. More details about the new
  interface are documented at https://colmap.github.io/cli.html
- More complete depth and normal maps with larger patch sizes
- Faster dense stereo computation by skipping rows/columns in patch match,
  improved random sampling in patch match, and faster bilateral NCC
- Better high DPI screen support for the graphical user interface
- Improved model viewer under Windows, which now requires Qt 5.4
- Save computed two-view geometries in database
- Images (keypoint/matches visualization, depth and normal maps) can now be
  saved from the graphical user interface
- Support for PMVS format without sparse bundler file
- Faster covariant feature detection

- Many more bug fixes and improvements

The latest source code can be found at https://github.com/colmap/colmap, pre-compiled binaries at https://demuc.de/colmap/, and documentation at https://colmap.github.io/

Best,

Johannes

[Johannes Schönberger]

Hi everyone,

COLMAP 3.5 has been released which comes with a license change to the BSD license, new features, improvements to existing features, and several bug fixes. Some of the highlights in this release:

- COLMAP is now released under the BSD license instead of the GPL
- COLMAP is now installed as a library, whose headers can be included and
  libraries linked against from other C/C++ code
- Add hierarchical mapper for parallelized reconstruction or large scenes
- Add sparse and dense Delaunay meshing algorithms, which reconstruct a
  watertight surface using a graph cut on the Delaunay triangulation of the
  reconstructed sparse or dense point cloud
- Improved robustness when merging different models
- Improved pre-trained vocabulary trees available for download
- Add COLMAP as a software entry under Linux desktop systems
- Add support to compile COLMAP on ARM platforms
- Add example Python script to read/write COLMAP database
- Add region of interest (ROI) cropping in image undistortion
- Several import bug fixes for spatial verification in image retrieval
- Add more extensive continuous integration across more compilation scenarios
- Many more bug fixes and improvements to code and documentation

The latest source code can be found at https://github.com/colmap/colmap, pre-compiled binaries at https://demuc.de/colmap/, and documentation at https://colmap.github.io/.

As usual, feedback is more than welcome on Github or here on the mailing list.

Best,

Johannes

[Johannes Schönberger]

Hi everyone,

There was a critical bug in the original release of version 3.5, which caused crashes in the automatic reconstruction tool. The binaries on GitHub are updated with a fix, so please download the latest version 3.5 of COLMAP again. Also make sure to pull the latest code changes in case you compile the COLMAP binaries yourself.

Best,

Johannes