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Pix4D News
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Start your drone and boot up your processing hardware. Why? #Pix4Dchallenge is back! In this edition we celebrate  surveyors who strive for accuracy and love mapping. There are 3 Apple iPad mini 4s and training and certification vouchers to win!

Are you ready to accept the challenge?

Make sure to read the instructions below. I’m looking forward to your awesome projects! 

Submission deadline

Thursday, March 15 (23:59 CET)
PS: The first 10 submissions get some Pix4D goodies! 

Prizes

:1st_place_medal:1st. Place: Apple iPad mini 4 (Wifi 7.90", 128GB, 4G) and a workshop and certification voucher.

:2nd_place_medal:2nd Place:  Apple iPad mini 4 (Wifi 7.90", 128GB, 4G) and a certification voucher.

:3rd_place_medal:3rd Place:  Apple iPad mini 4 (Wifi 7.90", 128GB, 4G).

What you need

  1. A drone.
  2. A Pix4D license. (Need a license? Get a Pix4Dmapper trial here.)

How to participate

  1. Find an area to fly.
  2. The name Pix4D  has to be written somewhere in this area , so that it is visible in the orthomosaic. This ensures that it is an original submission. Creative submissions get bonus points! PS: Download the Pix4D logo to print here.
  3. Acquire images.
    Note: Grid or double grid flight plans with nadir or slightly oblique images tend to give good results.
  4. Process the project on the Pix4D Cloud. You can either upload your original images at Pix4D.com or upload your project from Pix4D Desktop.
    Note: You can create the project in Pix4D Desktop to add Ground Control Points (GCPs) or Manual Tie Points (MTPs) to improve the accuracy of the reconstruction but the final outputs must be processed on Pix4D Cloud. You may not edit your point cloud, but we appreciate your enthusiasm to do so.
  5. Add a comment to this post with the link to your project on the Pix4D Cloud. 
  6. Share the link to this community post on one of your social media channels (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram). Tag @Pix4D and add the hashtag #Pix4Dchallenge.

The Pix4D Community team also made a project to test the challenge, check it out here.

Criteria to win

The ranking for this challenge is defined based on a quantitative and a qualitative criteria. The submissions will be ranked for each criteria, both rankings will be added to define the winners. PS: Bonus points for creative ways to add Pix4D in the project impact the ranking of the qualitative criteria.

Quantitative

A winning project will have a very small  from their ATPs (automatic tie points). This will be computed at Pix4D headquarters for each submission.

Qualitative

A winning project will have a crisp Digital Surface Model (DSM) and orthomosaic.
The image below shows two DSMs, the right one is crisper and will be considered better than the left one.

Jury

The jury is composed by:

  • Despina Karavia - Software Quality Assurance Engineer / Product Testing
  • Lisa Chen - Technical Communication Manager / Product Marketing
  • Matthieu Deveau - R&D Software Engineer / Product Development 
  • Pierangelo RothenbĂĽhler - Pix4D Community Manager / Product Support

Terms & Conditions

  • Resellers and Parrot Group (Parrot, Pix4D, senseFly, Airinov, MicaSense) employees are not allowed to join the competition.
  • No purchase necessary.
  • By submitting their projects, participants will be deemed to have accepted and agreed to the conditions.
  • :loudspeaker:The submission deadline is Thursday, March 15 (23:59 CET).
  • The entire project must be done specifically for the competition.
  • Participants allow Pix4D to own all rights of their project.
  • Winners and winning entries may be required to take part in any publicity resulting from this competition.
  • All winners will be contacted before  Wednesday, March 21st.
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Could you provide a nice logo file - either Illustrator or high resolution image format?

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Sure! Great idea Joseph, you can download the Pix4D logo here. Let me know if you need another format. :) 
I’ve added it to the challenge description as well.

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How big of a file (or how many images max) should we upload onto the cloud? Reason being is I’m currently in the middle of a huge project and would like to submit a part of it.

P.S - My internet here in Kuwait is very bad, so that comes into play too :frowning:

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The size of the project you upload is up to you, as long as the name Pix4D is visible in the project to make sure it is an original submission. I would still suggest to have at least 30 images, because with smaller projects the reconstruction will not be as good. Cool idea to use part of your large project as challenge submission! Good way to combine work and fun. :slight_smile:

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30 he says…hmmm  :slight_smile: I had my head wrapped around 500 to 800 imahes (per part, i think i have around 10K+ so far…and counting). I guess i really need to shorten it down :slight_smile:

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30 is really the minimum I would suggest to have a project that works (i.e. images get calibrated,…). I think a good trade-off is around 100 images, so that you can cover a large enough area but in a short amount of time. For example, the demo project has 71 images. However, keep in mind that the qualitative criteria rewards the DSM and orthomosaic, so it could be worth to make larger projects as well. There can be different strategies to win the challenge. :slight_smile:

I’m curious about your project now, feel free to create a separate Hall of fame post entry if you’d like to share the story and some previews about your project. 

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Here in northern Finland all the rooftops are covered in snow so qualitative criteria is out of the question. I’ll have to get creative :slight_smile:

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@Jaakko Yeah, but you’d make a heck of a pix4d logo :smiley:

@Pierangelo The project is a strip of highway, 38 KM of it.

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@Miodrag: My thoughts exactly :smiley:

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The YOUTUBE Video stops at 27 of 45 seconds, so you don’t see anything more :frowning: Is there anything more?

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Hola Pierangelo. Me he descargao Pix4d mapper, a través del acceso indicado en esta página, y no me da la opción de ortomosaico (opción 3, MDS, ortomosaicos e índices). ¿Qué puedo hacer? Saludos.

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Hola amigos de Pix4D!!! estoy muy orgulloso de subir mi mapa!! me gustaría su opinión sobre él y pues espero que les guste!! 

https://cloud.pix4d.com/pro/project/253655/map?shareToken=2973c1313b2844d7ad4671ae16c04b96

Fue realizado en “La Plaza de las 3 Culturas” donde se pueden apreciar construcciones de 3 civilizaciones, la Mexica (cultura mesoamericana), la iglesia de Santiago Apóstol (construida durante la ocupación española) y el edificio Chihuahua (ignaugurado en 1964). 

Ha sido la sede de numerosos eventos históricos importantes en México y por eso la elegí para participar en el reto. 

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Here is my map for the competition:

https://cloud.pix4d.com/pro/project/257272/map?shareToken=9ba57ae15a0a440fbf96f1beecd8c8ab

DSM is practically useless due to snow and steep shadows but I was aware of that beforehand. If you process the project on desktop you can use surfaces and edit point cloud so you can make a lot better DSM. I’m not (yet) skilled enough to change the seasons or angle of the sun :smiley:

Link to quality report: https://goo.gl/m5B4FV

This was a solo project. No outside help was used. 

Gear: P4P, 2 x Reach RS (Base and Rover), some marking spray, Coffee maker and lots of warm clothes 

EDIT: 11.03.2018 Made version 1.1 of my map. I defined processing area. Added few more mtp’s and marked gcp’s in more images to further increase accuracy and precision.

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@Raúl 

Is you project processed on cloud? I wanted to use the inspection tool to look at single images but the tool isn’t available

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Pretty excited to get started on my survey plan this weekend for the contest.

Just one thing, does it matter what country I am entering from? I am Australian is all…Most of the time we tend to get excluded from contests…

 

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Hello everyone!
I am so excited to see the first projects :slight_smile: So creative!

@Sam: We do not exclude countries. Everyone is very welcome to participate. Please show us a bit of Australia with your project!

@Antonia: Tienes que pedir por una licencia de prueba

@Graeme: Do you refer to this video? I can watch it without interruptions. In any case, you have all the information you need in this post!

 

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@Jaakko thx for the interest on my submition! I didn’t processed on the cloud, I needed to do some point cloud cleaning so I ran all process on my office workstation. I’m not really used to use the cloud so if you can tell me how to upload the images I gladly do it. 

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Could someone from Pix4D comment on rule 4. Do we have to process all steps on cloud or are we allowed to use desktop to edit point cloud and use surfaces and after that just upload the outputs to cloud?

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Hi Jaakko,

The project has to be processed on Pix4D Cloud meaning that you cannot simply upload the outputs.

Good luck :)!

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