How much do trial versions of Pix4d Fields lack?

Agriculture General Ag Questions/Troubleshooting
1

I downloaded a trial of pix4d fields. I need to map out pasture land for purposes of noxious weed control. I’m a small family cattle operation. What I need to do is pick predefined areas, map it before and after spraying and yearly after, and track the success of weed eradication with different products.

I can’t see how I could compare images of the same pasture over time, or how I can create defined borders of the field that I mapped in pix4dcapture with the trial. I wanted to compare it to Pix4d react, but both are near useless, all they do is put a series of pictures together for a higher resolution picture.

Are these features excluded from the trial software? it seems really odd that you would eliminate zoom from a trial software. There’s only one option on the menu bar in OSX.

2

Dear hilllivestockco,

the tool you need for the job is Pix4Dfields. And you could try all of it with the trial version.
The workflow would somewhat look like this:

  1. Fly you pasture land at your needed intervals with e.g. Pix4DCapture
  2. Create a new Project in Pix4Dfields and import and process your imagery per flight in into that project
  3. Now you have multiple orthomosaics each for one specific flight date
  4. Use the boundary tool to draw or import the field boundary and clip each ortho with it so you only have to deal with your area of interest
  5. Use the Annotation tool to draw or import polygons/points which you want to compare on your first ortho mosaic
  6. Export those annotations and import them on all the other mosaics from your monitoring flights
  7. Now you are able to track weed areas across multiple flights and how they respond to your treatment

Beside that you could also use the compare side by side / overlay tool (all found on the upper left corner) to compare two layers with each other.

I hope this is what you are looking for?

3

I also downloaded a trial of Pix4d Fields and I’m flying the drone over sample areas using pix4d capture. I’m using OSX, 10.15.7.

With both fields and react, I find basic functionality missing, like how to zoom in and out. I don’t have a mouse if it is the scroll button, I’m using a laptop with trackpad.

I did use the “boundary” and “annotation” tools, and exported the results to import on other maps. However…

Beside that you could also use the compare side by side / overlay tool (all found on the upper left corner) to compare two layers with each other.

…what you mention here is what I’m really looking for. Can I just import layers (previously created orthomosiacs), or do I need to create a new basemap? I don’t have experience with programming.

Can I import boundaries straight from Capture? Ideally I’d like to design and fly boundaries in capture, import the boundaries and subsequent flights into fields, then compare. If there is a tutorial you could point me towards, I would appreciate it.

4

First the product you should work with is Pix4Dfields as this allows you to create multiple ortho mosaic layers per project and has the compare tool.

So when you use Pix4Dfields you could create multiple layers from your mission flights images with the import button.
Capture

After that you can use the compare tool on the top left corner to compare between the layers.

Capture2
Capture21915×963 308 KB

You cannot import boundaries from Pix4Dcapture. You have to create them in Fields and from there you can export and save for later use in other tools. If your field boundaries do not change you can duplicate the flight mission in Pix4Dcapture for every new flight, to save you some work.
Besides that I would recommend to create boundaries for all your fields once with Pix4Dfields and export them to a secure location so you always have them at hand, e.g. as shapefiles or .kml .

With both fields and react, I find basic functionality missing, like how to zoom in and out. I don’t have a mouse if it is the scroll button, I’m using a laptop with trackpad.

On MAC:
2 fingers on the touchpad: swipe from bottom to top…and from top to bottom to Zoom.