COLMAP — The Complete Guide: Photogrammetry From Photos to Point Clouds and 3D Models
COLMAP is open-source software (BSD-3-Clause licence) for 3D reconstruction from a collection of images. It finds common points across the photos, computes the camera positions and builds a dense point cloud and a surface mesh. It has both a graphical interface and a command line.
COLMAP
COLMAP developers (Johannes Schönberger)
Photogrammetry from photos — Structure-from-Motion and Multi-View Stereo to build 3D point clouds and models.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Structure-from-Motion — camera positions and a sparse point cloud.
- Multi-View Stereo — a dense point cloud.
- Surface mesh — a 3D model built from the cloud.
- Graphical interface — for working and reviewing results.
- Command line — for automation and batch processing.
What to know
The dense stage is much faster with an NVIDIA (CUDA) graphics card. Ready-made binaries are provided for Windows; on Linux and macOS it is installed from package managers or from source. COLMAP is useful for documenting buildings, facades and photographed elements and for producing models from drone photos, but for full orthophoto mapping WebODM is more convenient.
Related tools
For photogrammetry with a node-based interface — Meshroom. For drone mapping and orthophotos — WebODM. For cleaning and measuring the point cloud — CloudCompare.
Meshroom
AliceVision
Turns a set of photographs into a textured 3D model — photogrammetry, free.
Get it from the vendor
WebODM (OpenDroneMap)
OpenDroneMap
Photogrammetry from drone imagery — orthophoto, elevation model, point cloud and textured 3D model.
Get it from the vendor
CloudCompare
CloudCompare Project
Point cloud and laser scan processing — registration, cleaning, as-built comparison and measurement.
Get it from the vendor
MeshLab
ISTI — CNR
Mesh and point cloud processing — hole filling, simplification, alignment and format conversion.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
COLMAP is one of the strongest open photogrammetry tools. With a suitable graphics card and a good set of photos it produces accurate models for documentation and measurement.