Hiya all
 
Just wondering when/if IM4.0 is going to be released, and if we can get some information on the new features? I am looking at advanced photogrammetry solutions, and would like to know what extra is going to be in store for IM4.
 
One thing I have always wondered why IM3.5 doesn't do the following -  
 
You have the option of "auto-marking" 3d modeling points inside IM - where you only need to place a point in one image for it to be computed in 3d space (a great tool)..... Well, why not take this a step further, and use this process to "flood" an image automatically with locators? say a locator every 2 pixels? (or a user definable spacing).  You could then create a tesselated mesh from all of these points - and have a pretty good basis to model from surely?  With a low enough point sampling, I am sure you could get good results.

Hello,
 
  The "enhanced" automatching feature you describe, is something we have in mind, and would be happy to offer. But its difficult to get good results with all images sets, in general conditions. It can work correctly for some subjects (many texture variation in the image), and generally needs special photo aquisition. In general cases you get a lot of bad matched locators...
This is not a feature that will appear in next IM release (Gecko), but could come later as a module that handles particular cases in restricted photo acquistion methods.
 
What I can tell now about "Gecko" :
- 2D/3D integration: new tool to ease the placement of imported objects
- calibration: new constraints  for better accuracy
- texturing : proxies, copy/instanciation, simple mapping edition  
- improved definition of the coordinate system
...
 
"Gecko" is planned to be released before Siggraph (8 August), where we want to make our main announcements.
 
I will be at this event, and would be happy to see some of you there.
 
Best,
 
Stef

what about a commercial plugin implementation for maya6?  
 
I'm actual doing an internship in a architectural office, and because there about 50%  mac's, Maya is the only useful tool for architectural visualization... I dont understand that there are so much development for 3dsmax, viz, autocad and other packages, because Maya is definitely the most used and cheapest professional 3d package from gamearts to visualization... and if you developed the plugin for pc, you only
have to hire someone who does the little changes for osx, irix & linux..
 
+ It definitly wouldn't have to come with all the feature of IM.. I think it would be enough if there are some of the basic features like camera calibration and some advaced projective mapping inside maya...
 
thx in advance