First attempt at 360 panorama with Skydio

LivinLarge · Oct 20, 2020

A few stitching errors. May need to overlap images more.

Bville park stitch 10000

kuula.co

skydioconvert · Oct 20, 2020

Looks pretty good to me.....

Tell us a little about how you did this.

What size is the file?

Ridefreak · Oct 20, 2020

Very nice picture. I've stitched some hi res jpegs together but none had the vertical range your picture does. I'm be curious how you did it if you care to share.

LivinLarge · Oct 20, 2020

Here is my technique for making 360 panoramas:
Put the drone up at a an altitude depending on the subject.
With the camera level, take a series of photos and rotating the drone so as to overlap the previous image by about 1/3.
Continue until you have completed a full circle.
Tilt the camera up enough to still see 1/3 of the height of the previous row and repeat.
Tilt the camera up again and repeat.
Tilt the camera below level and shoot another series then all the way down and complete a full circle.
In all I shot 51 images.
I used Microsoft ICE to stitch them together (it's free.)
Export from ICE as a JPG.
Open the image in Photoshop and change the canvas size so that the ratio of width to height is 2:1, adding the extra space at the top.
Stretch the sky to fill the empty space.
If you plan to use the image in FaceBook, resize it to 10, 000 x 5000 pixels. You can leave it full size for Kuula. My image before resizing was 16384 x 8192 pixels.
Edit the properties of the file under the details tab so that the camera maker says Ricoh and the camera type says Ricoh Theta S. Apps like Facebook will now recognize it as a 360 degree panorama.
It is also possible to create this kind of Pano from a video using ICE.

LivinLarge · Oct 21, 2020

Here is a tutorial I did for making panoramas with the Typhoon H images. The processing steps are basically the same. (The Typhoon H shot 18 images automatically.)

skydioconvert · Oct 21, 2020

LivinLarge said:
Here is my technique for making 360 panoramas:
Put the drone up at a an altitude depending on the subject.
With the camera level, take a series of photos and rotating the drone so as to overlap the previous image by about 1/3.
Continue until you have completed a full circle.
Tilt the camera up enough to still see 1/3 of the height of the previous row and repeat.
Tilt the camera up again and repeat.
Tilt the camera below level and shoot another series then all the way down and complete a full circle.
In all I shot 51 images.
I used Microsoft ICE to stitch them together (it's free.)
Export from ICE as a JPG.
Open the image in Photoshop and change the canvas size so that the ratio of width to height is 2:1, adding the extra space at the top.
Stretch the sky to fill the empty space.
If you plan to use the image in FaceBook, resize it to 10, 000 x 5000 pixels. You can leave it full size for Kuula. My image before resizing was 16384 x 8192 pixels.
Edit the properties of the file under the details tab so that the camera maker says Ricoh and the camera type says Ricoh Theta S. Apps like Facebook will now recognize it as a 360 degree panorama.
It is also possible to create this kind of Pano from a video using ICE.

Nice description.... seems very methodical BUT enormously time intensive.

Most also be quite a drain on the MR's flight battery.

I'm pretty patient but I'm not sure I could go through that process too many times....

Maxi3D · Oct 21, 2020

Thanks, I will try that sometime. This may sounds simple, how do you go into the picture mode and able to take one picture at a time?

LivinLarge · Oct 21, 2020

skydioconvert said:
Nice description.... seems very methodical BUT enormously time intensive.

Most also be quite a drain on the MR's flight battery.

I'm pretty patient but I'm not sure I could go through that process too many times....

It is faster to shoot video and have ICE created the pano from that. Just spin around and tilt the camera a bit with each revolution. ICE will extract the necessary stills rom the video file. I have done this successfully with other drones. Will try it soon with Skydio.

Ridefreak · Oct 22, 2020

Thanks for taking the time to explain that. I live out west and we've got some great places that would be perfect for this. One I can think of off the top of my head is lake Powell.

skydioconvert · Oct 22, 2020

LivinLarge said:
It is faster to shoot video and have ICE created the pano from that. Just spin around and tilt the camera a bit with each revolution. ICE will extract the necessary stills rom the video file. I have done this successfully with other drones. Will try it soon with Skydio.

ICE ???
Seem to recall this from somewhere but can't remember where.
Can you explain the term/software?

LivinLarge · Oct 22, 2020

skydioconvert said:
ICE ???
Seem to recall this from somewhere but can't remember where.
Can you explain the term/software?

ICE is Microsoft Image Composite Editor
Download for free here:

Computational Photography Applications - Microsoft Research

Pushing the limits of what is possible in photography As part of the larger Computer Vision Group, computational photography research explores the power of AI and computer vision, pushing the limits of what is possible by helping people fully and easily utilize technology with innovative...

www.microsoft.com

LivinLarge · Oct 22, 2020

Ridefreak said:
Thanks for taking the time to explain that. I live out west and we've got some great places that would be perfect for this. One I can think of off the top of my head is lake Powell.

That would be a cool place for 360 panoramas. I was there in 2006. Very beautiful. Love the western canyons.

skydioconvert · Oct 22, 2020

LivinLarge said:
ICE is Microsoft Image Composite Editor
Download for free here:

Computational Photography Applications - Microsoft Research

Pushing the limits of what is possible in photography As part of the larger Computer Vision Group, computational photography research explores the power of AI and computer vision, pushing the limits of what is possible by helping people fully and easily utilize technology with innovative...

www.microsoft.com

Thanks for the info.... I'll check it out.

richinAZ · Oct 25, 2020

LivinLarge said:
Here is my technique for making 360 panoramas:
Put the drone up at a an altitude depending on the subject.
With the camera level, take a series of photos and rotating the drone so as to overlap the previous image by about 1/3.
Continue until you have completed a full circle.
Tilt the camera up enough to still see 1/3 of the height of the previous row and repeat.
Tilt the camera up again and repeat.
Tilt the camera below level and shoot another series then all the way down and complete a full circle.
In all I shot 51 images.
I used Microsoft ICE to stitch them together (it's free.)
Export from ICE as a JPG.
Open the image in Photoshop and change the canvas size so that the ratio of width to height is 2:1, adding the extra space at the top.
Stretch the sky to fill the empty space.
If you plan to use the image in FaceBook, resize it to 10, 000 x 5000 pixels. You can leave it full size for Kuula. My image before resizing was 16384 x 8192 pixels.
Edit the properties of the file under the details tab so that the camera maker says Ricoh and the camera type says Ricoh Theta S. Apps like Facebook will now recognize it as a 360 degree panorama.
It is also possible to create this kind of Pano from a video using ICE.

The Flying portion of this Proceedure could be made into a "Skill" called "PANO" by Skydio and added to our Controller / App via a Software Update......PLEASE ! This is EXACTLY the use case for this Drone. Repeating a process using AI that would be difficult or impossible by most pilots. LivinLarge, I am going to forward this Thread to Skydio and see if they will add it to the Software. Then we only have to sweat POST-PRODUCTION....Cheers !

LivinLarge said:
Here is my technique for making 360 panoramas:
Put the drone up at a an altitude depending on the subject.
With the camera level, take a series of photos and rotating the drone so as to overlap the previous image by about 1/3.
Continue until you have completed a full circle.
Tilt the camera up enough to still see 1/3 of the height of the previous row and repeat.
Tilt the camera up again and repeat.
Tilt the camera below level and shoot another series then all the way down and complete a full circle.
In all I shot 51 images.
I used Microsoft ICE to stitch them together (it's free.)
Export from ICE as a JPG.
Open the image in Photoshop and change the canvas size so that the ratio of width to height is 2:1, adding the extra space at the top.
Stretch the sky to fill the empty space.
If you plan to use the image in FaceBook, resize it to 10, 000 x 5000 pixels. You can leave it full size for Kuula. My image before resizing was 16384 x 8192 pixels.
Edit the properties of the file under the details tab so that the camera maker says Ricoh and the camera type says Ricoh Theta S. Apps like Facebook will now recognize it as a 360 degree panorama.
It is also possible to create this kind of Pano from a video using ICE.

LivinLarge · Oct 25, 2020

It would seem that the Skydio could capture the full 360 view in one shot with the six navigation cameras.

richinAZ · Oct 25, 2020

LivinLarge said:
It would seem that the Skydio could capture the full 360 view in one shot with the six navigation cameras.

Link fired off to Customer Service. Added a few lines of begging. Hopefully, they will engage. I could have mentioned to them that their competitor has this SW functionality, but didnt. ; )

LivinLarge · Oct 25, 2020

richinAZ said:
Link fired off to Customer Service. Added a few lines of begging. Hopefully, they will engage. I could have mentioned to them that their competitor has this SW functionality, but didnt. ; )

I suggested this to them a long time ago. I see that the Skydio X2 does have this capability with the 360 superzoom. It has been suggested that they will add this to the Skydio2.