OpenDroneMap is an open source toolkit for processing aerial drone imagery. Typical drones use simple point-and-shoot cameras, so the images from drones, while from a different perspective, are similar to any pictures taken from point-and-shoot cameras, i.e. non-metric imagery. OpenDroneMap turns those simple images into three dimensional geographic data that can be used in combination with other geographic datasets.
So far, it does Point Clouds, Digital Surface Models, Textured Digital Surface Models, and Orthorectified Imagery. Open Drone Map now includes state-of-the-art 3D reconstruction work by Michael Waechter, Nils Moehrle, and Michael Goesele. See their publication at http://www.gcc.tu-darmstadt.de/media/gcc/papers/Waechter-2014-LTB.pdf.
OpenDroneMap can run natively on Ubuntu 14.04 or later, see [Build and Run Using Docker](#build-and-run-using-docker) for running on Windows / MacOS. A Vagrant VM is also available: https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/odm_vagrant.
*Support for Ubuntu 12.04 is currently BROKEN with the addition of OpenSfM and Ceres-Solver. It is likely to remain broken unless a champion is found to fix it.*
4. Copy the default settings file and edit it: `cp default.settings.yaml settings.yaml`. Set the `project-path` value to an empty directory (you will place sub-directories containing individual projects inside). You can add many options to this file, [see here](https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/OpenDroneMap/wiki/Run-Time-Parameters)
3. Download a sample dataset from [here](https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/odm_data_aukerman/archive/master.zip) (about 550MB) and extract it as a subdirectory in your project directory.
See [here](https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/OpenDroneMap/tree/ebaaf802a1fb50e335b3807a35d00cba1e106d11#installation) for more detailed installation instructions.
There are some environmental variables that need to be set. Open the ~/.bashrc file on your machine and add the following 3 lines at the end. The file can be opened with ```gedit ~/.bashrc``` if you are using an Ubuntu desktop environment. Be sure to replace the "/your/path/" with the correct path to the location where you extracted OpenDroneMap:
First you need a set of images, taken from a drone or otherwise. Example data can be obtained from https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/odm_data
Next, you need to copy over the settings file `default.settings.yaml` and edit it. The only setting you must edit is the `project-path` key. Set this to an empty directory within projects will be saved. There are many options for tuning your project. See the [wiki](https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/OpenDroneMap/wiki/Run-Time-Parameters) or run `python run.py -h`
The images will be copied over to the project path so you only need to specify the `-i /path/` once. You can also override any variable from settings.yaml here using the command line arguments. If you want to rerun the whole thing, run
Any file ending in .obj or .ply can be opened and viewed in [MeshLab](http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/) or similar software. That includes `opensfm/depthmaps/merged.ply`, `odm_meshing/odm_mesh.ply`, `odm_texturing/odm_textured_model[_geo].obj`, or `odm_georeferencing/odm_georeferenced_model.ply`. Below is an example textured mesh:
OpenDroneMap is Dockerized, meaning you can use containerization to build and run it without tampering with the configuration of libraries and packages already
Currently we have an experimental feature that uses ORB_SLAM to render a textured mesh from video. It is only supported on Ubuntu 14.04 on machines with X11 support. See the [wiki](https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/OpenDroneMap/wiki/Reconstruction-from-Video)for details on installation and use.
For documentation, please take a look at our [wiki](https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/OpenDroneMap/wiki).Check here first if you are having problems. If you still need help, look through the issue queue or create one. There's also a general help chat [here](https://gitter.im/OpenDroneMap/generalhelp).
[![Join the chat at https://gitter.im/OpenDroneMap/OpenDroneMap](https://badges.gitter.im/Join%20Chat.svg)](https://gitter.im/OpenDroneMap/OpenDroneMap?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=badge&utm_campaign=pr-badge&utm_content=badge)
1. Try to keep commits clean and simple
2. Submit a pull request with detailed changes and test results