Educational Technology Blog

Photosynth – 3D Photos

August 29th, 2011

Photosynth is a handy tool from Microsoft that allows you to build a 3D image of a scene. To do so you take multiple photos of the scene from different angles and perspectives, upload the photos into Photosynth where they are combined to build a ‘synth’. You can zoom in and out and navigate around your finished synth. It is particularly suited to viewing a building from different aspects.

In my example I took 13 shots of Belfield House (University College Dublin) from the front and sides.  I achieved a 77% synthy on this my second attempt, a considerable improvement on my first.  ‘Synthy’ describes the quality of a synth by measuring the degree of matching. According to Microsoft, ” it’s the probability that one can navigate between two photos selected at random, without replacement”. You can locate the site of a synth on Bing maps (Microsoft’s version of Google maps). This is my beginner’s example:

Or much better ones on the Photosynth website.

Entry Filed under: UCD