What free Linux software can stitch 24 indoor photos into a 360° panorama?

Question

I took 24 photos around a room on a tripod, trying to cover the full scene in three rows of 8 shots each. The camera was rotated by eye, exposure was mostly automatic, and the tripod may have shifted slightly during shooting. I’d like to turn these images into a web-viewable 360° panorama or virtual-tour style view.

Is there free software for Linux (or that works under Wine) that can stitch a folder of photos into a 360° panorama? If my shooting method makes this difficult, what are the main technical issues?

user27440 · Answer

Hugin would be the open source software package of choice for this... if you'd shot the images correctly.

See also:

The chances of your producing a usable equirectangular 360°x180° panorama out of the images you've shot, however is incredibly low, from your description of how you did it. But you might want to try, anyway.

Indoors (in smaller spaces), parallax becomes an issue that can keep simple image warping from being able to cleanly stitch together images without showing seams. To do this properly, you'd have found the no-parallax point of your lens, and used a two-arm panorama head to rotate around that point in yaw and in pitch to cover the sphere.

You'd also have figured out the FoV of your lens and shot sufficient coverage with sufficient overlaps. If you used a fisheye lens you might have had sufficient scene coverage and overlap to stitch.

But with, say, an 18-55 kit lens set to 18mm, to cover the sphere with 25% overlap (and you'd probably prefer something closer to 30% for safety and ghost/clone removal), the shooting pattern you'd need to cover the sphere with the camera in portrait mode (by this calculator) would be:

Row	Elevation	Positions
1	72º	4
2	36º	9
3	0	11
4	-36º	9
5	-72º	4

So, 37 images, in five rows. With precise rotation and tilt in pitch around the no-parallax point. (I.e., to cover the whole sphere, you have to have gotten the ceiling above you and the floor beneath you in the shots, too).

When I shoot this type of panorama, I use a tripod, a panohead set for the NPP of my lens, and a fisheye lens, and I can cover the entire sphere in 10 shots: 6 shots with the camera in portrait orientation, rotated every 60º + a zenith (straight up) and nadir (straight down) shot.

But typically for tripod removal in post, I'll need three nadir shots: two on the tripod rotated 180º from each other, and a handheld shot with the tripod removed.

Shooting 360ºx180º panos is a relatively involved and meticulous process that requires quite a bit of practice and post-processing study and learning and practice, which is why 360º cameras are now a thing. :D

What free Linux software can stitch 24 indoor photos into a 360° panorama?

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