site banner image
Collada plugin for
After Effects
More info here
Plugins and Scripts > Other

MicMac GUI

MicMac Graphical User Interface

A graphical user interface for MicMac photogrammetry software. The primary purpose is to provide an easy step by step workflow towards creating a 3D model from photographs by calling the various programs included in MicMac.
MicMac is "the photogrammetry software developped at the IGN (French National Geographic Institute) and ENSG (French national school for geographic sciences).
MicMac is a free open-source (Cecill-B licence) photogrammetric suite that can be used in a variety of 3D reconstruction scenarios."

MicMac is required

Meshlab can be used for mesh generation

MicMac Installation:

There is no installer.

YouTube Installation for Windows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQzb-TN18Ow

YouTube Installation for Linux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU-mkRwnhn0

Windows Bug and Fix

The windows build of MicMac will stop working when running Tapioca with a large number of images. I discovered the error while using a set with only 274 images. The error is:
"make.exe: ./MkTapioca: line 299757: Error: -- Input line too long, increase MAXLINELENGTH"

The fix is to edit the local.mk file with a text editor.
micmac_win\binaire-aux\windows\startup\local.mk
add 1 zero to the end of the number, "MAXLINELENGTH := 800000"
changes 800000 to 8000000
save the file

FFmpeg

"FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of video and audio files."

FFmpeg website: https://ffmpeg.org/

FFmpeg is used by the MicMac GUI to convert a video file to a sequence of jpeg files.

  • Windows users can find builds here: https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ in the "release builds" section. The GUI has been tested with the "ffmpeg-release-full.7z" file.
  • Ubuntu Linux search inside the Software Installer for "ffmpeg" and install it.

FFmpeg Install for Windows

  1. After download, extract the files and rename the folder to "ffmpeg"
  2. Search for "env" in the windows search bar, look for and select "Edit the system environment variables"
  3. Press the "Environment Variables..." button at the bottom
  4. Find "Path" in the user variables list and press "Edit..."
  5. Press the "New" button then the "Browse..." button and navigate to the ffmpeg/bin folder
  6. Test by opening a command terminal and type ffmpeg, if you get a wall of text it worked.

GUI Installation

for Mac OSX the installed MicMac GUI will need to be processed in the System Preferences > Security and Privacy > General to allow it to run on the system.

file paths buttons

Start the MicMac GUI program and press Start and scroll to the bottom to setup the file paths for the MicMac installation and a temporary working location where files will be generated.

  1. Mm3d Path - select the "mm3d" file from the installation inside the "bin" folder
  2. Temp Path - ignore to use the default path or create a new folder for temporary and working files or select a preexisting empty folder.
  3. Ffmpeg Path - for windows select the "ffmpeg" file from the ffmpeg installation inside the "bin" folder.
    Linux users do not need to set this value, the default "ffmpeg" will work.
  4. Remove Settings - opens a file browser to the settings files so it can be manually deleted.

Usage:

The GUI is used by running processes from the left, "Start" to the end, "C3DC" or "Tequila"

Notes can be found by right click when the cursor adds a question mark. The header on the upper left will give an overview for each section and some elements within the UI also have a right click help action.

Basic Minimal Workflow

  1. Start
    • Clear Files - clean the working folder
    • Copy Images - copy selected images to the working folder
    • alternative to "Copy Images" is Load Video - to use ffmpeg for conversion of a video file to a jpg sequence of files.
  2. Tapioca
    • Run - to find the tie points between images
  3. Tapas
    • Optional - Choose operation Orient final so a checkmark shows when completed
    • Run - to calculate the camera positions in 3D space
  4. Apericloud
    • 3D Preview - generate a sparse 3D cloud with camera representations to check that the calculated positions are good.
  5. C3DC
    • Dense Cloud - generate a dense 3D cloud of points.
    • Export Meshlab - optional to continue processing outside of micmac gui
  6. TiPunch
    • Select 8 to 12 images that cover the model.
    • Run - to generate a triangulated mesh from the C3DC points
  7. Tequila
    • Keep the same image selection as TiPunch
    • Run - to generate a textured 3D model from the TiPunch mesh.
    • Export Mesh File - to save 3D model to OBJ, DAE or GLTF format.

Note that TiPunch and Tequila never left the experimental stage of development and better results can be achieved by processing the dense cloud result of C3DC with another program like Meshlab.

The OSX installer was created on an old machine from 2006 which has some issues running the QT based applications used for masking and manual point entry screens. There may be no issues on newer machines.

The OSX version is still 1.0.3 and does not include the video conversion option.

YouTube MicMac GUI Playlist

OSX Notes:

  • OSX version suffers from some incompatibilites with the QT based MicMac programs.
  • For OSX click away to another app then back to the SaisieQT and use the file menu to load the image or ply file. The ply file will still have the "Loading files 100%" popup but it can be worked around awkwardly.
  • OSX Main QT issue seems to be that the mouse left mouse button isn't working when first opening the files.
  • When building the osx dmg installer I had to edit the package.json file and downgrade the electron-builder version to "22.10.5"

Links

Documentation and tutorials

Note that some samples are not high quality images and MicMac expects high quality for a good result.

Sample data
Camera Database https://github.com/openMVG/CameraSensorSizeDatabase "Green Code button", then "Download Zip"

https://github.com/clintonman/micmac_gui to get the source code
The App.js file has instructions for running from the source.

InterfaceCEREMA alternate GUI with Google Translation English documentation

I found the alternate gui recently. It has more advanced options.

Setup
  1. Settings > Associer le repertoire de MicMac - and choose the micmac binary folder
  2. Setup for Meshlab - Settings > Combine 'Meshlab' or 'CloudCompare' - and choose ...Program Files/VCG/Meshlab/meshlab.exe
  3. Close Meshlab after it opens
Simple Usage
  1. File > New construction site - and choose the images
  2. MicMac > Options > Orientation - choose a mode if nothing is selected
  3. MicMac > Launch MicMac
  4. When complete it will open a textured mesh inside of Meshlab

Rough Notes:

  • noon less shadows
  • greater than 50% overlap, 80%, 60% parallel, 80% convergent shooting
  • low iso
  • f8 or more
  • 1 focal length
  • calibration 90% overlap, use entire image area, 5 images, 12 images, corner of building, various distances, different roll angles, good contrast
  • avoid long focal length
  • Aerial parallel overlap 80%, 20% inter-band
  • more images when rounding a corner of a structure to maintain continuity
  • turn table masked or blank background
  • handle held shutter 1/160 or less
  • get close to subject(fill the frame), don't get too close to subject?
  • 50 or 60 images

November 2, 2024

  • hopefully a blind fix for a user white screen issue.
  • Linux version now at v1.1.1
  • version number shows in the Setup page
  • no real functional changes

September 16, 2022

  • update windows and linux version to 1.1.0
  • fixed tie point masking bug
  • added support for video files as the data source

May 18, 2022

  • update Mac version to 1.0.3 to match windows and linus - still qt issues

April 5, 2022

  • version 1.0.3
  • fix mesh centering bug
  • remove unnecessary init points dialog
  • fix mesh origin display location
  • show pims2mnt and tawny commands
  • reformat the Make 3D Mask commands to look like all the other command inputs
  • rename file to use standard electron.js name

April 3, 2022

  • fixed double ply file load in the 3d view
  • added contrast enhancement option to tapioca
  • change tequila default max texture size to match the command 8192, 4096 is not the correct default value
  • removed awkward mask image buttons
  • version number 1.0.2

March 28, 2022

  • fixed tequila bug caused by previous mask proessing update
  • found that tequila default size is actually 8192 not 4096, fixed

March 27, 2022

  • removed Old Tapas option - was removed from micmac
  • distinct mask names for c3dc replocbascule and sbglobbascule
  • fixed mask indicator on images
  • update help and add about dialog
  • New version number 1.0.1

March 14, 2022

  • re-upload corrupt windows builds
March 3, 2022
back to the "Others" Plugins and Scripts list
march 3, 2022