COLMAP
======

.. figure:: images/sparse.png
    :alt: Sparse reconstruction of central Rome.
    :figclass: align-center

    Sparse model of central Rome using 21K photos produced by COLMAP's SfM
    pipeline.

.. figure:: images/dense.png
    :alt: Dense reconstruction of landmarks.
    :figclass: align-center

    Dense models of several landmarks produced by COLMAP's MVS pipeline.


About
-----

COLMAP is a general-purpose Structure-from-Motion (SfM) and Multi-View Stereo
(MVS) pipeline with a graphical and command-line interface. It offers a wide
range of features for reconstruction of ordered and unordered image collections.
The software is licensed under the new BSD license.

The latest source code is available at `GitHub
<https://github.com/colmap/colmap>`_. COLMAP builds on top of existing works and
when using specific algorithms within COLMAP, please also cite the original
authors, as specified in the source code.


Download
--------

Executables and other resources can be downloaded from https://demuc.de/colmap/.


Getting Started
---------------

1. Download the `pre-built binaries <https://demuc.de/colmap/>`_ or build the
   library manually from `source <https://github.com/colmap/colmap>`_
   (see :ref:`Installation <installation>`).
2. Download one of the provided datasets (see :ref:`Datasets <datasets>`)
   or use your own images.
3. Use the **automatic reconstruction** to easily build models
   with a single click (see :ref:`Quickstart <quick-start>`).


Support
-------

Please, use `GitHub Discussions <https://github.com/colmap/colmap/discussions>`_
for questions and the `GitHub issue tracker <https://github.com/colmap/colmap>`_
for bug reports, feature requests/additions, etc.


Citation
--------

If you use this project for your research, please cite::

    @inproceedings{schoenberger2016sfm,
        author={Sch\"{o}nberger, Johannes Lutz and Frahm, Jan-Michael},
        title={Structure-from-Motion Revisited},
        booktitle={Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)},
        year={2016},
    }

    @inproceedings{schoenberger2016mvs,
        author={Sch\"{o}nberger, Johannes Lutz and Zheng, Enliang and Pollefeys, Marc and Frahm, Jan-Michael},
        title={Pixelwise View Selection for Unstructured Multi-View Stereo},
        booktitle={European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)},
        year={2016},
    }

If you use the global SfM pipeline (GLOMAP), please cite::

    @inproceedings{pan2024glomap,
        author={Pan, Linfei and Barath, Daniel and Pollefeys, Marc and Sch\"{o}nberger, Johannes Lutz},
        title={{Global Structure-from-Motion Revisited}},
        booktitle={European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)},
        year={2024},
    }

If you use the image retrieval / vocabulary tree engine, please cite::

    @inproceedings{schoenberger2016vote,
        author={Sch\"{o}nberger, Johannes Lutz and Price, True and Sattler, Torsten and Frahm, Jan-Michael and Pollefeys, Marc},
        title={A Vote-and-Verify Strategy for Fast Spatial Verification in Image Retrieval},
        booktitle={Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV)},
        year={2016},
    }


Acknowledgments
---------------

COLMAP was originally written by `Johannes Schönberger <https://demuc.de/>`__ with
funding provided by his PhD advisors Jan-Michael Frahm and Marc Pollefeys.
The team of core project maintainers currently includes
`Johannes Schönberger <https://github.com/ahojnnes>`__,
`Paul-Edouard Sarlin <https://github.com/sarlinpe>`_, and
`Shaohui Liu <https://github.com/B1ueber2y>`_.

The Python bindings in PyCOLMAP were originally added by
`Mihai Dusmanu <https://github.com/mihaidusmanu>`_,
`Philipp Lindenberger <https://github.com/Phil26AT>`_, and
`Paul-Edouard Sarlin <https://github.com/sarlinpe>`_.

The project has also benefitted from countless community contributions, including
bug fixes, improvements, new features, third-party tooling, and community
support (special credits to `Torsten Sattler <https://tsattler.github.io>`_).


.. toctree::
   :hidden:
   :maxdepth: 2

   install
   tutorial
   concepts
   database
   cameras
   rigs
   format
   datasets
   gui
   cli
   pycolmap/index
   faq
   changelog
   contribution
   license
   bibliography
   legacy