A Second Look At WebODM - Open Source Drone Mapping Software

[@souocara38able]

Hey Rich, don't apologize for the time, if you want to cover a topic that needs an hour, it needs and hour. Anything less then the time required would be a poor job. This takes me back to when I put together a new generic computer and installed OSX on it. It was the cheap way to get a Mac and it worked, kind of. However it constantly needed tinkering and updates were problematic. It just became too difficult. When I put it together I had two SSD's, one for windows and 1 for OSX, it was a dual boot system. After I spent all the time to learn how to do this and then the time to do it, I ended up just re formatting the OSX drive and using it for a scratch disk because it was too buggy and time consuming to deal with. My impression at this point is that ODM might be a similar experience for me. For others who are better at that kind of thing it would probably work very well...

[@jamiegoosney]

Hello from Newfoundland Rich. Really enjoying your videos, especially this one. Thanks for sharing your knowledge to the community. I have been using LiDAR, photogrammetry mapping and am now getting into video-grammetry (That's not a typo. It does exist), since the late 90's. I have used PIX4D, DroneDeploy, Precision Hawk (precision Analytics), Agisoft then Metashape, etc. All have their advantages and disadvantages. The largest survey I have done (DJI Matrice 210 RTK v2) is a 10.5 square KM green field mapping project with not GCP's. I thought I knew alot about drone mapping until that project. Over 22,000 images processed in 11 batches. Accuracy was acceptable but not what I expected, especially between process areas and heavy tree cover. The big thing for me is ground control points. I use the Emblid Reach and am happy with the results, especially when there are surveyed control monuments to work from. I will take a chance and try WebODM and let you know what I find with regards to accuracy. Again, keep up the great work. Cheers from the Rock.

[@AZ-Drone]

Thanks for stopping by the channel and getting in touch. I think you're the first person from Newfoundland that's gotten in touch here. Very cool that you've been doing this for quite a while. I've explained to friends often that modeling with images has been around a lot longer than drones have been around. I've even tried my hand at generating 3D models with my regular cameras and Metashape (photoscan). Let me know how it goes with WebODM. I need to build a better modeling system, as I can't do a lot with WebODM, but I know that's the fault of my system being under powered for the application. Thanks again for stopping in, and nice to meet you!

[@alannassir9543]

I'm just starting out with my drone career so I can't afford the best programs out there. I'm young and have the time to learn so this is a great option for me. Thanks for the tutorial and in-sight. I look forward to your new course (I come from a construction background). From Australia. Thanks for your help!

[@cosmichasm]

Perfect! I'm Young, I don't have a lot of disposable income, and I too have the time to learn.

[@MoistDreams]

I am not young, but I have time to learn. My biggest problem is likely same as yours $, it takes $ to get tools to do things and $ is wasted if you have tools but not making any money using them, which is my current predicament I am also from AUS I got the tools to learn and get familiar with the workflow before trying to sell myself. For instance, some things I have at my belt, I am not 3 months into flying drones I have a Mavic Pro Plat, its being changed to Mavic Pro 2 quite soon. Toolbox wise I have - Litchi, DroneLink, Pix4DCapture (it seems a number of companies contracted wise prefer this thing and it is pretty much drag and go downside is it cost $ to process the images so I was looking into this as an alternative way to get around the hefty yearly cost to process images with it and process it on my own compute power) www.dronelink.com/ is probably my most expensive tool $150 AUD since I went with the ultimate package with all whistles. I also have Luminar 4 and Swapping from Premier Pro to probably Resolve Studio, Adobe pricing is just too insane for cloud sub costs I don't like sub fees outside of streaming services they are fine for business as usual, a well-oiled business can soak the upkeep costs but for an individual and I am sure you agree sub-plans just destroy your wallet an ability to actually get hardware to shoot with instead of software. So anything that can do the right job even if its a bit more of a steep learning curve but saves me some $3000 a year over something like DroneDeploy which lets face it if I was bringing in consistent $1000's monthly I would just go with a proper pro suite and call it a day but getting started don't have the funds to blow of software that is only useful to select clients as most just want top-down ortho which I can do in like 3 other free apps and I don't even have to stitch that they do that I just show up an shoot.

[@MoistDreams]

Just an update a couple weeks after my initial comment. I know have the Mavic Pro 2 with the Vivid Polar Pro 4-16ND/P I have a hard case 3 batteries, Smart Controller as watching reviews for that I just had a gut feeling it would appear more professional and after using I can say 100% I prefer that over the standard mavic and phone setup which I constantly had to re-plug the connect cable in when changing apps on my old Mavic defo don't wanna deal with that. I managed to get Docker going just fine and I did pay for the installer, although technically I could have built the git and did it myself just the first time and the quickest time was to just pay the $50 and let it do it for me. I run into similar issues the video poster did. I find that Default works fine for straight down 0% gimble at 80-90% overlap in your choice of software, I found the Mavic Pro 2 seems to handle this process better (no surprise. Electronic shutter and all that 1" CMOS) But Default sucks for 3D Models at least the initial preset is not as optimal as it can be, I tend to enable Full 3D Mesh if its just landscape mapping and I also enable LZMA compression and the one which helps with larger orthoimages along with a couple other things I forgot. Some things you should absolutely do right off the bat, start with the default preset and then duplicate, then name that Test Run or anything similar in wording. Change details quality to lowest, disable 3D Model, enable setting which won't let you start the processing from different points but helps process faster, your choice if you disable DSM and DTM. Boom you have yourself a super low resource usage and low-quality test preset something I use when I want to check my dataset of images on a render that won't take upwards of 30min before I can see what the ortho perspective is like. Now you got that create a new task and create a duplicate of High Resolution - enable fast ortho, and disable 3D model for sanity and crank that resolution quality to ultra, now you have a basic ultra-resolution for ORTHO only. I find the 3D stuff does not seem to come out as good in Open Drone Map but that might also just be the Node being NodeODM I ended up installing the optional experimental node which supposed better for 3D stuff. I also strongly advise creating more custom presets from the base ones with various parameters tweaked to save time, experiment with the compression as that is ultimately going to affect your zoom level detail, or random blurs and just have a bit of a play. I did end up getting the "Missing Guide" optional PDF that has a ton information on how to configure this thing pretty fast. There is a utility you can get which will help you pre-program the camera.json using your actual drone similar how to the pos sensors calibrate you can calibrate the camera parameters using this tool to spit out your exact drone camera parameter file I have yet to do it but I bet it saves about 15min or 20min of compute time as it runs thru the camera task portions of the rendering. Elevation mode requires OPENCV2 heads up on that, make sure you got Python 3.8 installed NOT 3.9.x and use 'pip install cv2' If you get a build error grab the missing lib using pip and make sure pip is updated and all that stuff.

[@xoneeleven]

Good, down-to-Earth presentation. Thank you, bro.

[@jefffong807]

Richard, One more question. Have you attempted to use WEBODM lightning? My computer is robust for 3D processing, however, this service sounds appealing for my future workflow process.

[@AZ-Drone]

I haven't used Lightening yet. I did spend some time on their website, but I haven't had a need for networked processing yet.

[@jorgedavila156]

Dear Rich, thank you for the very instructing video. Very professional and interesting to listen to, while at the same time keeping a required no-nonsense attitude. Kind regards from Perú.

[@LearningInVR]

what are you using for orthos now adays |m trying to develop a MVP and i thought it could be as simple as an orthomosaic processed relatively quickly vs marketing video ... but it would have to be something that works more often then not so workflow can scale

[@AZ-Drone]

It's funny you ask. I'm just finishing up a client web page upload for a current project, and I used WebODM for the ortho. WebODM produces nice ortho results for giving clients an overview of their job site.

[@Farnhamification]

Looks promising! Hope you make a tutorial series on webodm

[@AZ-Drone]

Provided I can get my hands on a higher end Windows platform this year I will be doing a bigger series on WebODM. While it's an Open Source platform, it does require more RAM and a higher end overall system to get them most out of it. So while it's practically free, you do need a machine geared toward getting the most out of it. 😀

[@Farnhamification]

@@AZ-Drone That's all true, but I feel that the younger generations are being raised on coding and taught how to build their own computers at school (I know my neices and nephews are). So whilst I personally find some open source software alternatives awkward to use, I think computer literacy and hardware tweaking is the way of the future. Could be wrong though!

[@tri-amconsultingcivilengin8988]

Hi Clark, I've purchased the WebODM web-installer, the User's Text Book, and the GCP editor. and have had good success on high resolution models here in South Africa, using Windows 10 PC with 32 GB ram, and a good Quadro Graphics card. The learning of the "tweaking" of the parameters is a challenge. (I tend to run back to Agi-Meta, but I do want to proceed and get up to speed with WebODM. I like the open source concept wherein we as the user-group develop our tools of the trade together, and at lesser cost (South African Rand-to-US-Dollar is a huge challenge for us). Thank you for your video. I would have like you to test the WebODM on a good spec PC. Best regards, Leon Botha.

[@AZ-Drone]

I really do need to get a higher end mapping setup next year to do additional testing with WebODM. I want to be able to do more with it as well. Hopefully that will be in the near future!

[@tgnet24]

Hey Rich, Thanks for the video. Thought you'd like to know. I ran an old project which I ran on Drone Deoply to test out WebOMD (I paid for the Installer). It was 421 photos, took the program 2hours and 28 mins to complete on Default option. I do have 32 GB of ram.

[@AZ-Drone]

Very cool! I need more RAM!

[@jefffong807]

Rich, Good morning! Great job and I am a subscriber and soon to be student! Since this YT video 3 years ago, have you been using this tool as part of your process to deliver orthos to your clients? Is your class on WEBODM made the same time as this video or later? I am interested in offering orthos uploaded to Google Earth for my CRE clients, and hoping this will be a great start, WEBODM, to begin with. Thank you!

[@AZ-Drone]

WebODM is up on my screen a few times a week at this point. Since most of my clients are way more interested in Orthomosaics and videos I haven't had the need for rendering 3D models. WebODMs orthos come out fantastic. The 3D rendering isn't as good.

[@hoffstar96]

Look forward to future updates on WebODM if you keep testing it out. I might too.

[@AZ-Drone]

I will be Matt. Reloaded it on my windows machine this afternoon. 😀

[@tmc-fotografiede2272]

Keep on going this WebODM Project, I real like watching your videos about it! Cheers from Germany! :-)

[@AZ-Drone]

Thanks! I need a higher end mapping machine to test this one out more thoroughly. If I get my hands on a new PC I’ll be sure to make more videos on WebODM.

[@tmc-fotografiede2272]

@@AZ-Drone That sounds great, I just ordered 64 GB of ram for my working horse. At the moment I am studying how to calibrate the lense for best possible results. Instead of most other programs, ODM uses the images itself to calibrate on each dataset. Also it is recommended to fly two altitudes in Cross pattern in -90° and -70° to deliver more attachment points/features. So having a calibration pattern makes sense to get one generic good working cameras.json (camera template file) to boost things liitle up on processing. The only downside I noticed to far, was the networking in docker. For some wired reason, it did not want to download all the mighty big ODM containers for docker, via my 1gb/s cable modem, instead I had to use a redundancy 10Mbit connection via VPN :-D I turned out to be a routing thing in docker, as it manages its own networking interfaces... So lang, happy landings :-) Tim

[@mikaelovaska8918]

Have you tried using lightning network for processing your models? It is a cloud computing service for ODM, I think it makes sense for many people since buying a computer with lots for RAM can be a bit expensive.

[@PISQUEFrancis]

it would be nice to see your flight lines for the 3d ...

[@AZ-Drone]

I'll try to remember to do a follow up and show the flight lines. It's pretty basic though, 4 passes from East to West and West to east (2 each way). The flight didn't even use the full battery.

[@PISQUEFrancis]

@@AZ-Drone Let me restate that ... when I mean "see", I really meant to see them on my computer(to practice with). I have always felt, various data should either coincide with existing, good, accurate and/or precise data or plainly state why data does not line up more perfectly... my greatest fears in over 40 years(Land Surveyor), was for my data to be used incorrectly with existing data that "happened", to look like it "could", be used in conjunction with other existing data.

[@MrJujuthedude]

For 3D structures you need to run photo overlaps of 83% for good results.

[@AZ-Drone]

In the case of this one, I was flying for the Ortho only for my clients, so didn't have a higher overlap. I only mentioned the 3D model on this as I wanted to show that folks could see the 3D model feature on WebODM. With my current system, I fear doing a 3D model of this site would cause a Code 1 error even on the lower settings.

[@OrchidHuntersAustralia]

Thank you. I have used WebODM lightning, not sure how that is differrent to WebODM? Ortho came out well stitched but blurry tree canopy. Is the installer better? Is the installer everything I need for Web ODM (as in will it take care of everything for me)?

[@AZ-Drone]

Thanks for checking out the video and for your comment. Sorry for my delay in response. Often times I find that tree canopys don't look perfect in any 3D modeling application. I often refer to the trees as "melting ice cream" in some models. The installer doesn't really buy you anything extra beyond an easier installation. The functionality of WebODM is pretty much the same between the free installation and the installer. So it's just an easier install.

[@AZ-Drone]

By the way, I stopped by your channel. Very very cool. I've subscribed as well. Checked out your "Man vs Drone" video and several others.

[@OrchidHuntersAustralia]

Thanks Rich good to know. Glad you liked my films! :)

[@MsDziamara]

have you lunch desktop docker on win pro or home edition.. As it is much simpler to install on win pro ver then on home edition. Is anyone have here a link how to install smoothly docker on win home edition ?

[@AZ-Drone]

I've installed the docker on Windows 10 Home Edition. I'm not sure if it's easier to install on Pro or not. I can say that I've had some difficulties launching the docker on my system occasionally.

[@mmbodnar]

RAM is king with ODM, I have run a few hundred images with just over 20 gb of RAM, the Hi-Res is nice and I use the fast-ortho to make sure the fundamental image set is sound..

[@lgtwzrd]

25:55 Go to Docker Desktop and tweak the settings for the disk and memory size reserved for the projects. Chances are it is set to something super low. You can also change the disk where it creates the image file, to a different disk that has more space for it. I changed the disk memory size and I stopped having the error code 1 exits.

[@AZ-Drone]

Nice I will try that. Thanks a ton!!!!!

[@lgtwzrd]

@@AZ-Drone by the way I tried to align a photo sequence for a map, and webODM did a better job aligning them than metashape standard, really impressed!

[@jimd4632]

WHy would you not run it in max quality mode?????

[@AZ-Drone]

In my case with the iMac I was using the render would always fail. The iMac couldn’t run the highest quality. I’m hoping to build a new system in 2021 to do some more tests. After reading around I know I didn’t have near enough RAM.

[@chriss590]

I mean, if you watch the video, that is explained...

[@SpectrumDrone]

Hi Rich, I am hoping you keep experimenting with WebODM once you have gone through the manual. I have it and it is helpful for sure but as you know there are tons of settings to test. I'm trying to figure out why the DTM and DSM's are white . The WebODM community is definitely helpful but you have to be patient and keep trying tweaking settings. I'm using 400 images on a 5 acre lot and it works with the default. Now trying to get the HiRes to work. I have 64 gb ram and windows10.

[@AZ-Drone]

Hi again Roger! Just responded to your question on GCPs on another thread. On WebODM, I would really like to do more with it. The issue is my iMac can't do much more in my experimentation. Too under powered. And my current Windows platform is too under powered as well. I need to build a true mapping system similar to higher end CAD systems. At the moment I can't make a business case for the cash outlay for a new system just to experiment further with WebODM. While WebODM is "open source" and super reasonable on the price (Free to under $100 max), you do have to spend a good bit to build a platform that can run it properly. Hopefully as business picks up into the fall I can justify the expenditure to myself, and then do some more testing with WebODM. :)

[@SpectrumDrone]

@@AZ-Drone I totally understand. I have to finish reading the "WebODM Missing Guide" myself still. I find you have to tweak the settings one by one almost to see which ones cause the process to fail. The error messages straight up do not point to any setting that caused the fail which if the developers were ever able to put that in place would be wonderful. I'll see what the rest of the "missing guide" has to say on that if anything. All the best and thanks again for putting your effort out there for us. Its much appreciated.

[@harvpila]

Is there an option you can share a finish project thru link like drone deploy?

[@martinbadoy5827]

Thanks a lot for the highly informative video. I'm planning to build a quite affordable PC for WebODM or similar software, and do you think a 9th gen Core i5 with 6 cores, or a Ryzen 5 3600, with 32gb or maybe even 64gb of RAM, could do high-res photos?

[@AZ-Drone]

Good afternoon! Glad the video was helpful. I've been trying to figure out final specs for a new mapping system myself. I've got a good friend who likes building systems as a hobby, and he's sent along a few links to me. Sadly, I've spent my equipment budget for 2020, so will have to wait until 2021. I like to refer to Agisoft's recommendations as I am a Metashape user. Here's a link to their suggested build. www.agisoft.com/downloads/system-requirements/ I'm looking to do a "Advance Configuration" with 64GB of RAM

[@martinbadoy5827]

@@AZ-Drone Thank you very much for the link! I think the CPUs I mentioned on 64gb, plus an old GTX 970 graphics card I have lying around, could fall somewhere in between basic and advanced

[@YuriiLebid-op1xv]

Thanks

[@baltpurev9469]

Thanks a lot!

[@AZ-Drone]

Sure thing.

[@lospadres6970]

Watched your video in its entirety and I am not trying to cause a rift, but you should have started your video with the info at 5:17 to catch the user's attention and then double-backed to the initial information. This would grab the user's attention in the first 30 seconds and keep them here for the next 30 minutes.

[@Vashtstamped]

Run a home server that can process faster then drone deploy lol.

[@Riverrage_03]

Great till you want to share it 😂

[@AZ-Drone]

You're correct. WebODM doesn't have a way to share directly. I export 3D models and then share them on Sketchfab, and when I export Orthos I host them on one of my websites.