Validating photogrammetric processes using Jetstream and synthetic images

Abstract

This project focuses on photogrammetry--the process of making 3D objects from 2D photographs--and the reverse engineering of this complex process. While a number of disciplines from cultural heritage to natural sciences use photogrammetry, the algorithms used by the most popular (and accurate) software packages are black box because of their proprietary nature. This project takes a synthetic 3D object which can be fully understood on the digital level and reverse engineers the photogrammetry process to determine the modeling process's accuracy. This is of key importance to anyone trying to make reliable models available to researchers unable to visit an object or collection in person. These researchers need to have full confidence in the final model in order to draw valid conclusions about it. A virtual machine was created on Jetstream to import synthetic models, capture them photogrammetrically with synthetic cameras, and export those captures for processing. Utilizing a parallel processing workflow on Jetstream, the speed-up in creating 3D models allowed for refinement and comparison of different variables and models with much shorter turn-around times.