Tried one of these a couple days ago and forgot the downward photos.  Tried again today since the weather was so nice, and even managed to catch a bird in the shot.  I used three 180 degree panos approximately 120 degrees apart, plus a row of overlapping downward angled pics plus three photos straight down.   Put together in ICE, which created a 31mb image.  the one above is a reduced size down to 7mb or so.  Full size image at LINK

Thats a clear : Whow!

Wow, really nice,  it is a pity that I have to download it since I can't preview it, thanks for sharing.

nice shot texas!

Now this I'm really interested in.. after putting all the photos through the software was this created automatically? or did you have to do any adjustments?

That's pretty awesome!

Can you put together a tutorial on how you created? Awesome work!

tcase Posted at 2017-10-24 06:13
Can you put together a tutorial on how you created? Awesome work!

OK so i just took a look and downloaded ICE https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ ... e-composite-editor/

Look like you take all the images listed in original post and then hit automate.

This is some awesome software!

Great shot!

excellent work,
Let me get it straight, you made this out of only 9 photos? seems like a very compact effort...
What altitude did you shoot from?

droneburger Posted at 2017-10-24 05:42
Now this I'm really interested in.. after putting all the photos through the software was this created automatically? or did you have to do any adjustments?

After taking the photos, I used this tutorial.  The first part it is using the litchi app, which has a 360 panorama feature built in, but I just used the aforementioned 3 x 180 degree panoramas plus ground shots.  once you have the photos in ICE, and it does its thing, you select stereographic and can move the picture around to get the tiny planet look.  

djiuser_Kf4iPA3 Posted at 2017-10-24 08:15
excellent work,
Let me get it straight, you made this out of only 9 photos? seems like a very compact effort...
What altitude did you shoot from?

No, the total number of photos was 102 - 3 x 21 plus the ground photos.  the first time i just did the three 180 panos and had a hole in the middle of the planet.  

edit:  altitude was about 200ft

Thanks.
I guess I got confused by the "120 degrees apart" thing, which implies 3 photos for a full circle.
So... 21 photos for a full circle in each gimbal angle, and then 3 more straight down? Or 3 panos and 21 different gimbal angles? (still doesn't add up to 102, something in the math doesn't work out for me)

djiuser_Kf4iPA3 Posted at 2017-10-24 09:00
Thanks.
I guess I got confused by the "120 degrees apart" thing, which implies 3 photos for a full circle.
So... 21 photos for a full circle in each gimbal angle, and then 3 more straight down? Or 3 panos and 21 different gimbal angles? (still doesn't add up to 102, something in the math doesn't work out for me)

the three 180 degree panoramas are 21 photos each, plus I did two more rows of overlapping rotation of photos as well as some straight down shots.  I had the grid up on the screen and would pick a house or tree that was in the right middle box and rotate until it was in the left middle box to ensure overlap.  the additional photos were 18 more in total.  Keep in mind that you'll have to rename the photos as spark puts each set of photos in a folder and numbers them 1-21 so you'll have to renumber the photos before putting them into one folder.  To make things easier, set the panorama that you want to be the focus of your final image to the photos 22-42 set so that ICE puts it in the middle (top of the planet) of the panorama.  

while you could let spark stitch the panoramas together and then put them into ICE, I think it works better to give ICE the original photos so you're not stitching on top of stitching.  You'll still need the "below" images though.  

OK, I got it now (I think...)
3 panos is 63 photos in total,
two more overlapping sets of 18 photos (36 total)
and three straight down
That's how you get to 102
Am I right in my understanding? Trying to work out the math so that I can try it. Sorry to bug you on that.

nice image .. thanks for sharing

nice image but a lot of photo's , litchi software takes 34 pictures at one click for a full 360 pano like this:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2ktiJ9LVRw5T0RwOGFGVXNOc0U

djiuser_Kf4iPA3 Posted at 2017-10-24 09:31
OK, I got it now (I think...)
3 panos is 63 photos in total,
two more overlapping sets of 18 photos (36 total)

Looking back i must have double-copied one of the sets of pictures, it should be 63 photos from the programmed panoramas, plus 18 photos taken manually.  In looking at the images, i probably had well over 50% overlap on the manual images with the panoramas because i wasn't sure where those images stopped.  

so in total it should have been 63 plus 18 for a total of 84 pictures.  i'm sure YMMV, so just make sure you have good overlap so that ICE can make a good match between photos.  I know that litchi does it with fewer images but storage is cheap.

Jos A Posted at 2017-10-24 10:06
nice image but a lot of photo's , litchi software takes 34 pictures at one click for a full 360 pano like this:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2ktiJ9LVRw5T0RwOGFGVXNOc0U

Yeah I could have probably gotten the job done with fewer photos but this worked and is basically free.  

TexasAerials Posted at 2017-10-24 10:52
Looking back i must have double-copied one of the sets of pictures, it should be 63 photos from the programmed panoramas, plus 18 photos taken manually.  In looking at the images, i probably had well over 50% overlap on the manual images with the panoramas because i wasn't sure where those images stopped.  

so in total it should have been 63 plus 18 for a total of 84 pictures.  i'm sure YMMV, so just make sure you have good overlap so that ICE can make a good match between photos.  I know that litchi does it with fewer images but storage is cheap.

Thanks a lot.
One last question:
Is the Spark battery powerful enough to support all that?
In the video tutorial the battery is almost drained, and that's with just 34 photos, and on a Mavic battery that lasts twice as long. Granted, the Mavic probably drains the battery more because of its weight, 4K, more sophisticated systems etc. But still....

djiuser_Kf4iPA3 Posted at 2017-10-24 11:29
Thanks a lot.
One last question:
Is the Spark battery powerful enough to support all that?

I didn't have any issue with battery life to get the photos done, and even had a few minutes to fly around and take a couple more pictures unrelated to the panoramas.  I think there was 45% of battery left after the panoramas.  

Very cool.  I want to give this a shot myself.  From looking at the skyline, is this Dallas?

Absolutely worth to download!

nice bird shot

There's no picture showing in this post and the link gives:This file can’t be previewed
Heights Tiny Planet.jpg · 31.07 MB

1px0ff Posted at 2017-10-24 13:39
Very cool.  I want to give this a shot myself.  From looking at the skyline, is this Dallas?

Close, it is Houston

Madwand Posted at 2017-10-24 15:33
There's no picture showing in this post and the link gives:This file can’t be previewed
Heights Tiny Planet.jpg · 31.07 MB

the picture in the post is still rather large, over 7mb, so it may take a minute to show up.  The full-size file is too large to preview on dropbox, so you have to download it in order to see, doing the math, it is around a 175 megapixel image (15534 x 11380).  

Ah, I didn't see the DL button.  Anyway, there's still no picture in the thread.  It took less than 2 seconds to DL the original.

Quick question how are you patching in the sky? the spark can't take photos directly up :/

Here's my first try, using only horizontal pano mode not 180 and i missed a bit .. but the sky has me baffled.

droneburger Posted at 2017-10-25 09:13
Here's my first try, using only horizontal pano mode not 180 and i missed a bit  .. but the sky has me baffled.

[view_image]

Looks good, it looks like you started your panos with the camera pointed slightly down, which captured the ground below and some of the sky.  I took the panos with the camera starting in the full up (horizontal) position, so they captured more of the sky (spark will point the camera up above the horizontal when taking the 180 panos).  You probably didn't need to take pictures manually pointing down for yours.  

What you have so far looks good, just need to make sure you get the full 360 and a little more sky and you'll be good to go.  

Looking good!

Awesome thanks for sharing!

Cool image!

TexasAerials Posted at 2017-10-24 10:52
Looking back i must have double-copied one of the sets of pictures, it should be 63 photos from the programmed panoramas, plus 18 photos taken manually.  In looking at the images, i probably had well over 50% overlap on the manual images with the panoramas because i wasn't sure where those images stopped.  

so in total it should have been 63 plus 18 for a total of 84 pictures.  i'm sure YMMV, so just make sure you have good overlap so that ICE can make a good match between photos.  I know that litchi does it with fewer images but storage is cheap.

You can over-capture with Microsoft ICE. It's fine to have redundant photos. And you don't have to use Litchi.