This week presented itself with a great deal of frustrations and successes. I decided to work on taking high quality aerial photos of Stine Lake and West Quad of the college campus during the weekend because I did not want to risk loosing a single day of clear weather to take photos! Sunday was especially hot – I learned that hot temperatures are detrimental towards the performance of both the drone and my phone used as the interface for the Pix4D mapper pro program because I had to allow the devices to cool off for a significant amount of time before I could run new missions which was a bit frustrating. On Monday I focused on taking better quality photos of my designated areas from a closer point of view so the image quality would be better for the photogrammetry programs I was creating on Pix4D. I then combined my two projects of West Quad models together for the best and most accurate model that could be created by two data sets. I did this by creating tiepoints in identical locations on each model and reprocessing the models as one. I quickly discovered how long it actually takes to merge projects together and to create new ones from large metadata. I learned that when merging projects, I had to reload the point cloud, mesh, DSM (digital surface model), orthomosaic factors, and index which was very frustrating. However, I knew that the loading process was important since I needed to improve the geolocation and clarity of my models in order to avoid empty voids in each structure. The more overlaps I had in my photos, the better models I would create on Pix4D. After several runs of similar missions of Stine Lake and the West Quad I managed to get overlap areas of 5+, the highest categorical amount of overlaps in the Pix4D program that allow for the best resolution models.
It rained heavily from Tuesday through Friday which made it difficult to find the opportunity to take more photos to improve my models. During these times, I managed to work with the photos that I had already taken before waiting for the rain to clear up to take more. On Wednesday and Thursday I used the low, circular flight feature of the Pix4D app to take heavily detailed photos of the library as well as the West Quad first year halls. By the end of the week, I had created not only a merged project displaying Musselman Library as well as the West Quad but the map also showed DTM (digital terrain level), elevation levels of the terrain of the campus! The Pix4D program was set to DSM, however, so I had to reset the settings to display DTM since I only wanted to show the elevation levels of the terrain without any additional buildings or structures.
This week’s library workshop was on Scalar, a website used for interactive storytelling. We learned how to operate through the user interface as well as the basic functions of the program. Although I am not quite sure if I will use this program with the current project I am working on, I believe that it may be very useful when I create a website of my digital projects and work after this summer is complete.
Next week I plan to finish all four photogrammetry models as well as calculating their DTM in order to begin evaluating the slope of the terrain. On Monday, I will also be meeting with Professor Principato from the environmental science department to learn how to use a total station to manually take calculations and measurements of the slope of the terrain!
Model of the Stine Lake and the West Quad before triangle meshes were loaded in.
Photos taken from different angles and areas of the West Quad and Stine Lake being processed by Pix4D to fill in the mesh of the model.
Photogrammetry model of the West Quad and Musselman Library after merging several projects together over the course of many days.
