TeleSculptor v1.2.0 Release Notes
This is a minor release of TeleSculptor that provides both new functionality
and fixes over the previous v1.1.0 release.
The biggest changes in this release are the transition to a new Sphinx-based
user manual at https://telesculptor.readthedocs.io, the removal of deprecated
MAP-Tk command line tools, improved handling of mesh coloring from the video,
and an interface for manual camera calibration by manually placing camera
registration points on frames.
TeleSculptor v1.2.0 also builds on updated KWIVER v1.6.0 and Fletch v1.5.0,
which provide upgraded third-party packages and improvements to algorithms.
For example, TeleSculptor now uses VTK 9.0, OpenCV 4.5, and Qt 5.12.
KWIVER now supports both CPU and GPU (CUDA) implementations for depth map
fusion, and an option has been added to TeleSculptor to enable GPU use.
While command line tools have been removed from TeleSculptor, it is now
possible to reproduce the entire TeleSculptor processing chain from the
command line using the kwiver command. The command line workflow uses
KWIVER v1.6 directly and does not require the TeleSculptor GUI.
Additional details about TeleSculptor changes in this release are provided
in the detailed release notes below.
Updates since v1.1.2
TeleSculptor Application
-
Move computation of mesh coloring to a separate thread to prevent it from
blocking GUI interaction while running. -
Display a progress bar when coloring the mesh using more than just the
current frame. -
Added an option to mesh coloring that excludes coloring surfaces that are
occluded from the camera's viewpoint. This prevent colors on closer
surfaces from also spilling onto the hidden surfaces behind them. -
Added an option to mesh coloring that excludes coloring surfaces using
pixels masked out by the loaded mask image sequence. -
Added an option to export the fused mesh as a VTP file including the colors
projected from all frames instead of only the mean or median color. -
Updated depth computation tools to return uncertainty images to be displayed
and saved. -
Update Depth Map and Batch Depth Map estimation tools to select the
support frames based on a new angle_span parameter rather than
sequential frames. This allows more consistent angular sampling
of frames. -
Added support for building against VTK 9.0.
-
Added an option to import PLY mesh files like those exported from
TeleSculptor -
Added support for opening .ts (MPEG transport stream) video files.
-
Added interfaces to the GCP and Camera View panels to allow the placement
of Camera Registration Points (CRPs). These are manual feature tracks
placed on multiple images and associated to a GCP. -
Added an interface to estimate a camera from manually placed CRPs.
-
Added keyboard shortcuts to change frames and to change the selected ground
control point. -
Added an option to enable use of the GPU. This specifically supports depth
map fusion for which both GPU and CPU implementations exist. For the first
time, it is now possible to run TeleSculptor end-to-end without a
CUDA-enabled GPU.
Tools
- Removed deprecated command line maptk tools. All the underlying kwiver
algorithms can be accessed via the 'kwiver' command line tool.
Build System
-
The superbuild now allows using system packages for many dependencies.
-
Updated OpenCV version to 4.5.1
-
Updated Qt version to 5.12.8
-
Updated VTK Version to 9.0
Documentation
- Replaced the PDF user guide and the basic HTML help page with a better
formatted and more maintainable manual using Sphinx. The same user manual
is now available at https://telesculptor.readthedocs.io and offline in the
TeleSculptor help menu.
Fixes since v1.1.2
TeleSculptor Application
- Fixed a bug in which the "zoom to landmarks" option would make the World
View projections permanently invalid if there were no landmarks to zoom to.