VGMaps

General Boards => Mapping Tips/Guides => Topic started by: Maxim on June 17, 2007, 03:15:48 pm

Title: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: Maxim on June 17, 2007, 03:15:48 pm
Edit: newest version lives here:

http://www.smspower.org/maxim/Software/ScreenshotAutostitcher

--------------

Here's a little something I spent a couple of hours (and then some) on this Sunday evening. It's a program that auto-stitches screenshots together. It's designed for high-frame-rate screenshots. I used the "screen shot each frame" feature in Gens to get the images, but other emulators can probably do something similar.

It's horribly slow, by the way. It took about 20 minutes to stitch 1300 images here. I still have a few ideas for speeding it up. I'll release an executable sometime this week if I get it in a user-friendlier state.

Program:

(https://img519.imageshack.us/img519/522/image1hu3.png)



Result:

<img src="http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/7100/image2pb2.png" width="1199" height="1105" alt="User posted image" />



I also need to think of a better name for it.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: TerraEsperZ on June 17, 2007, 03:33:23 pm
Wow, interesting. I wonder how the algorithm that determines that two screenshots should go together works. Since you say it's designed for high-frame-rate capture, I assume that two images need to be really close to be associated and it wouldn't be of much use for people who take fewer screenshots and do so by hand, like me.



Anyway, it's great to see homemade applications like this one and Revned's Tile Replacer :) I wish all the programing I learned in college (and forgot afterward) would let me code programs this awesome...



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on June 17, 2007, 03:44:15 pm
Yes, for the first try it assumes the images are absolutely in the same place and tries ever-increasing distances from that point. I just modified it to assume the same movement as there was between the previous image pair (one of my speed-up ideas) and sure enough, it sped it up a lot. This might then be OK for less high-frame-rate, but still regular, screenshots. Doing it for human-targeted screenshots would be a lot harder.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: DarkWolf on June 17, 2007, 03:50:20 pm
Looks interesting, not sure I'd use it, but there's not exactly an overflow of tools available for mappers, so anything is welcome in my book.



That reminds me, I need to finish Raw Candy one of these days.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on June 17, 2007, 04:06:05 pm
The stitch that took 20 minutes in the first post now takes 35 seconds... of course, these are still bases for further work, there's still a lot of skill involved in making the maps look good.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on June 19, 2007, 12:16:01 pm
(When) are you going to release this?
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on June 19, 2007, 03:49:17 pm
Give me a few days. I need to write a doc to describe how to use it effectively. It tends to screw up if you give it certain kinds of input and I have some ideas about how to improve that.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on June 19, 2007, 04:01:50 pm
Cool...

By 'a few days', you do mean 'a few days', don't you <_<... not that it matters, I just hope you're not gonna do a "Toad's Tool 64" thing, where you say it'll be released as early as January 2006, then May 2006, then June 21st 2006, then June 23rd 2006, then June 26th 2006.... and it's June 2007, and it's still not released, for example XD
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on June 21, 2007, 12:58:11 am
Here you go:



http://www.smspower.org/maxim/forumstuff/Screenshot%20stitcher.zip
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on June 21, 2007, 12:26:32 pm
... I tried it... but I failed.... firstly... the screenshots didn't seem to stitch accurately... secondly.... I got some "index line out of range"... message.. what does this mean?

Oh and.... how ironic.... that no sooner do I mention Toad's Tool 64... that the beta is released.... only today.... 1 pm EST, roughly.... which has already gone (I'm trying it now)... but anyway.... about the Screenshot Stitcher... <_<
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on June 21, 2007, 01:21:10 pm
Nevermind... I forgot to do the thing about Irfanview or whatever.... <_<
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on June 21, 2007, 02:59:46 pm
Actually... it just said it again... <_<
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on June 22, 2007, 02:37:21 am
That "scanline index out of range" thing needs some debugging, I haven't been able to reproduce it consistently.



I'm waiting on the Gens KMod source code to add some features to avoid the screenshot renaming stage (it has a hard-coded 3-digit naming system) and also to enforce a non-black (or customisable) default colour (for obvious reasons). Then it ought to work even better...
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on June 22, 2007, 04:16:51 am
Oh...... also... I did manage to try and make a map of "Turbo Turns" in MM2, but when I done the autostitch thing, the screenshots, for some reason, started squashing into each other.... and a few thousand pixels were 'out of place' according to the  program... <_<
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on June 22, 2007, 05:05:19 am
That means you need to either change some of the settings or re-make your screenshots. They tend to squish into each other for one of two reasons:



1. The screenshots are all quite similar - maybe there's vast expanses of black due to disabling some layers, maybe the game is just not very detailed - so an incorrect placement matches enough pixels to go under the "stop looking for a better placement if it matches this well" threshold. Solution: decrease that number (it's the bottom one). Problem is, that makes it go a lot slower. Decreasing the pixel search distance will speed it up again, check the log to see what match distances it needs. Make sure the emulator isn't dropping frames, though.



Try looking at the log for the bits where it was matching OK, and see what kind of match levels there were. Choose a threshold a bit higher than them and try again.



For the next version I hope to make some little graphs for the stitching stats to make it easier to tune the config.



2. There's a little bit of detail on the screen but certain static aspects - the status display, main character, etc - end up being more consistent frame-to-frame than the background details. The solution is to try to re-make the screenshots with sprites turned off, or if there's a status bar (not the case for Micro Machines) get something like Irfanview to crop it out of all the screenshots.



The final option, which is one you probably have to fall back on quite a lot, is to watch what it's doing and hit the Autostitch button as soon as it starts screwing up to stop the process (even better, just before). Then save out the correct stitch, delete the images it used (see the log to see where it got up to) and restart. Then you can manually merge the parts.



After you use it for a while you get a sense for how to grab screenshots that avoid such problems.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on June 22, 2007, 04:04:30 pm
I don't really understand any of that... <_<... but I can show you two maps that I (tried) to make from MM2, those being "Whine On!" and "Rim Runners"... <_<
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on June 22, 2007, 11:19:37 pm
Looks interesting, I'll have a try. Thank you very much!
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on June 23, 2007, 04:39:15 pm
Well, I don;t see any pictrures yet... I had a go with Whine On, here's what I got on the first attempt:



http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/692/micromachinesiiwhineonav5.png



It just needs some trips to the of-track parts to clean it up, which could be done by traditional mapping methods.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on July 01, 2007, 09:43:58 am
Here's version 0.3 with a whole bunch of more stuff, most notably image masking.



http://www.smspower.org/maxim/forumstuff/Screenshot%20Autostitcher%200.3.zip
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on July 01, 2007, 09:54:42 am
Tutorial time!



1. Get Gens KMod



http://www.spritesmind.net/_GenDev/index.php?page=gensK



(You can use other emulators so long as they have the right kind of features.)



2. Load a ROM



3. Get to an in-game moment where you want to start mapping



4. Set it to Frame Skip 0 (ie. render 100% of frames even if it slows down) and then choose "Screen Shot each frame". It'll start hammering your hard disk as it writes 60 images per second.



5. Now move around in-game so everything becomes visible. Here's a video of me mapping a Micro Machines 2 level:



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1930249089414408138



I died a few times but it's not the end of the world, so long as the screen moves smoothly throughout.



6. This game has a few on-screen status images (clock, lap count, etc). I made this mask image which is black wherever I want to get rid of them (I also want to get rid of the player's car sprite):



User posted image



7. Load these all up into Screenshot Autostitcher and stitch with the settings set to search 16 pixels, match 50%/95%, scrolling both ways, decimate 1, not reverse order. You get this:



User posted image

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/5589/stitchedab0.png



As you can see, it's just a few more screenshots away from being complete.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on January 23, 2008, 04:27:22 am
Do you know of any emulator for the Sega Master System that allows you to take screen shots of every frame? I was going to use your program for Phantasy Star. Thanks!
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on January 23, 2008, 06:25:07 am
I already mapped Palma:



User posted image



and there are full maps (worlds and towns, as well as non-screenshot dungeon maps) at Phantasy Star Cave anyway.



I have a custom-modified version of Meka for mapping that gives me screenshots of every frame. I'll try to finish it off and get it included in the next release.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on January 23, 2008, 10:15:26 am
Thanks, releasing the modified version of Meka would help me out a lot. I tried the phantasy star cave but the maps weren't high resolution and the planet maps were pretty small too. Your map of Palma looks great though. Thanks for all your hard work!!!



I look forward to your next release.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on January 23, 2008, 11:26:18 am
Huh? Their maps are all full-resolution, eg.



http://www.pscave.com/ps1/dezoris.shtml

click on "the larger version of the map" to see http://www.pscave.com/ps1/images/dezoris2.gif. (514KB GIF pngouts to 75KB. Yay for pngout.)



Meka is not my project, I can't control when it releases. I do know the author and I know he's the lead developer on a very cool new DS game that's nearing completion and as such, he hasn't got much time for working on it. I'll post a bare .exe that will need to go with a normal Meka's support files.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on January 23, 2008, 12:34:45 pm
http://www.smspower.org/maxim/forumstuff/mekaw-capturemods-20080723.zip



There you go.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on January 23, 2008, 05:53:55 pm
Thanks for posting the modded version of Meka so quickly, but when I double click on the exe file it says I have to install audiow32.dll so I downloaded audiow32.dll and put it in my Window's System directory.



Now when I click on the exe file nothing happens.



As far the maps of phantasy star at Phantasy Star Cave thanks for pointing that out I downloaded them as soon as I found out, I was looking at Phantasy Star II & IV and when you click the link for the large image of the plant maps it leads to a broken link.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on January 23, 2008, 08:41:46 pm
WEll I downloaded the current version of Meka and just replaced the exe files and that seemed to solve the above problem but now I'm getting this message upon start up



MEKA 0.72

(c) 1998-2007 Omar Cornut (Bock) and contributors

--

Loading MEKA.MSG (messages)..

On line 591: Unknown message "Msg_Options_Capture_Automatic_Crop_Align= "Automatically crop and align screen captures."", skipping it.

Language "English" is incomplete (367/368 messages found) !

The following messages are missing:

  MSG_Options_Capture_Crop_Align

This is the default language, so we need to abort.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on January 24, 2008, 03:07:58 am
That's because I built against a recent SVN source tree with a slightly changed language file. Download http://svn.smspower.org/svn/meka/trunk/meka/meka.msg and it will hopefully be better.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on January 24, 2008, 06:44:14 am
Wow thanks, it works perfect now!



I just wanted to test it out so I entered the first town in phantasy star and took 3,802 picutres I used your program and this is what it came out with.



<a href="http://s41.photobucket.com/albums/e295/Specialt1212/?action=view&current=PS1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e295/Specialt1212/PS1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket">[/url]



I would still need to fix the edges but that other than that your program is awesome!



What emulators do you use for the other systems to take a screen capture per frame?

NES, SNES, GB, TG16
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: RT 55J on January 24, 2008, 06:50:48 am
PROTIP: Don't save maps as JPEG files.

---

Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on January 24, 2008, 07:01:25 am
I didn't try making any other systems' maps yet, I'm a Sega fanboy I guess. This tool was only created because I saw that menu item in Gens KMod.



If you find one that can record to (lossless) AVI then you can use that as an intermediate phase, and save the bitmaps out from Virtualdub or similar.



I'd be interested to hear about other emulators that work this way. It's normally a really easy mod to add support for it.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on January 24, 2008, 07:17:33 pm
Thanks for the tip RT 55J, what do you normally save them as PNG?



Maxim, Honestly I'm a sega fan boy too, I would like to map all the phantasy star / shining force games!!!!



If I find any other emulators that support this function I'll let you know. Thanks for your help!
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: DarkWolf on January 24, 2008, 07:33:19 pm
Feel free to finish the Phantasy Star II set I started for this site.  I probably won't get around to finishing it.



Also nothing wrong with being a Sega fanboy, it will help balance out some of the Nintendo fanboys here.  ;)
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on January 24, 2008, 09:56:45 pm
Thanks I'm planning on doing all the phantasy star games so I'll definately finish it up!
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on February 01, 2008, 07:01:37 am
This first map I made, I turned off the character sprite instead of making a mask. When I tried to make a mask (only black and white pixels) and load it into the autostitcher it freezes. Any ideas what's going on?



Also why does your program only except .bmp files should it except a lossless image type such as .png or.tiff?
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on February 15, 2008, 06:36:00 am
Well good news I have completed 8 town maps for Phantasy Star for the Master System. I could go faster but I'm actually playing the game too so it's taking longer than expected. I'll upload them here once I'm done!



If anyone can answer the above questions in my previous post, please do because I'm interested in hearing the answers. Thank everyone for your help!
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: TerraEsperZ on February 15, 2008, 09:44:58 am
You'll have to ask Maxim about the possibility of saving in a different format, since it will no doubt involve additional coding that he might/might not be willing to do.



As for the PNG format, you don't have to worry as it is lossless as well. Personally, it's my favourite format because it's widely used and close to the best file size you can theoritically get for a lossless format (though you might have to fiddle with programs like PNGGauntlet to achieve the best result since there are no optimal settings that will achieve the smallest size for all PNGs; it's pretty much a case of trial-and-error).



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



Current projects: Mega Man V (GB), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES), Sonic CD (Sega CD)
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on February 15, 2008, 01:16:47 pm
Thanks for the response.



I'll upload all the maps once I've completed the whole game.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on February 17, 2008, 09:35:37 am
I've been away for a few weeks, hence slow to respond.



1. Masks seem a bit funny, changing colour depth seems to help. I'll fix it if I get a chance.



2. It only accepts BMP because that's quick and easy to handle. I could add in a PNG library with a little effort. Since you'd have to PNG-optimise anyway (no general purpose program can hope to compress as well as PNGOut, for example), saving as BMP shouldn't matter.



PNG conversion should be lossless, unless you use some screwy software to do it.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: TerraEsperZ on February 17, 2008, 02:46:03 pm
After reading the release notes of the retranslation, I noticed that you actually worked on it :) Don't hesitate to plug your own work when it's quality stuff like that!



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



Current projects: Mega Man V (GB), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES), Sonic CD (Sega CD)
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on February 17, 2008, 07:18:09 pm
Maxim Said:
I've been away for a few weeks, hence slow to respond.



1. Masks seem a bit funny, changing colour depth seems to help. I'll fix it if I get a chance.



2. It only accepts BMP because that's quick and easy to handle. I could add in a PNG library with a little effort. Since you'd have to PNG-optimise anyway (no general purpose program can hope to compress as well as PNGOut, for example), saving as BMP shouldn't matter.



PNG conversion should be lossless, unless you use some screwy software to do it.



I hope you're playing through the Phantasy Star retranslation, by the way. The maps are unaltered.

Wow I didn't realize you work on that project... and sadly I already started the original game which I must say is rather bland.



As soon as I finish playing the original game I'll give the retranslation a try since it seems as though the story has been flushed out.



Thanks for your hard work on the autostitcher and the retranslation.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on February 18, 2008, 12:37:05 am
Savegames should be directly compatible between all versions of the game.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on February 18, 2008, 09:03:09 pm
Thanks for the info, but I still think I'll wait and replay the whole retranslated game from the beginning.



I'm sure it will be more enjoyable playing your version from start to finish.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Special T on February 23, 2008, 06:47:15 am
One last question as I'm almost done with the game.



I was trying to create a world map of the 3 planets, I know they are already available and can easily be downloaded but I just wanted to know this for future reference.



The water moves so when I take a screen shot of every frame the autostitcher isn't able to piece the map together like it normally would. Is their anyway I can make the on screen graphics freeze while I'm walking around the planet?
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: RT 55J on February 23, 2008, 04:44:15 pm
You could try finding out how many frames the animation is and let the emulator take a snapshot every interval.



Alternatively, you could splice the screenshots together by hand. It isn't that hard.

---

Dot? Dot. Dot!
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on February 24, 2008, 04:48:56 am
The map stitcher has a "decimate frame rate" option to enforce the interval after the screenshots are dumped, but of course it wastes some disk space and they have to be 100% dumped, no dropped frames. You can instead just reduce the low threshold to allow the stitcher to keep working, but depending on the situation that might not work. Else you'll have to do some ROM hacking to get the effect you want.



I might look into implementing a "freeze palette" and/or "freeze tiles" feature in Meka. At least, if I ever get time...
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: DarkWolf on June 01, 2008, 01:46:57 pm
I tried my hand at making a stitcher for human-taken screenshots this afternoon.  It's pretty fast until you get to an area that has a lot of solid/masking color or repeated patterns.



I prototyped it in PHP, I'll try a C port soon, but unfortunately that's only going to get me so much in terms of speed.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on November 07, 2008, 01:00:16 pm
I made a new version:



http://www.smspower.org/maxim/utilities/screenshotautostitcher.html



The big features are:



- AVI support, eg. for DosBox videos

- PNG, PCX, GIF support for screenshots

- Can stitch much larger maps than before
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on November 17, 2008, 12:48:41 pm
Another new version (0.7) is out. Masking was broken in the last version; I added a few helpful GUI controls and rearranged it into tabs to leave more room for the map (which was getting squeezed out on small screens).
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Piranhaplant on November 25, 2008, 05:42:15 pm
This program works great!  I'm sure it will be very helpfull for some of my future maps.  The avi support is very helpful, and I probably wouldn't use it without that.  I hope to see some new versions soon.

---

Games I have mapped--Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES), Mario Party 3 (N64), Super Mario Bros Deluxe (GBC), New Super Mario Bros. (DS), Mario Kart DS (DS)
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on November 25, 2008, 08:11:46 pm
Hey, Piranhaplant, do you have a website with all your maps on it? And can I see the Mario Kart DS maps you've made (the remaining ones), before they're put on here? <_<
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on November 26, 2008, 02:03:39 am
Piranhaplant Said:
This program works great!  I'm sure it will be very helpfull for some of my future maps.  The avi support is very helpful, and I probably wouldn't use it without that.  I hope to see some new versions soon.

---

Games I have mapped--Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES), Mario Party 3 (N64), Super Mario Bros Deluxe (GBC), New Super Mario Bros. (DS), Mario Kart DS (DS)

What program is producing your AVIs? What would you like to see in a new version (apart from more speed and better stitching, of course)?
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Piranhaplant on November 26, 2008, 09:54:34 am
I actully don't have a website, you will just have to wait each week until they are put up here.  I am using either cam-studio, snes9x, or visual boy advance to make the AVIs.  There's not really any new features that it needs, just what you said, speed and accuracy.

---

Games I have mapped--Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES), Mario Party 3 (N64), Super Mario Bros Deluxe (GBC), New Super Mario Bros. (DS), Mario Kart DS (DS)
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on November 26, 2008, 02:06:43 pm
You can't like put the images onlike photobucket, imageshack, etc? Oh well.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Maxim on November 27, 2008, 04:51:11 am
TUK, please stop map-begging! Getting them a few days early really doesn't enrich your life that much, and if you applied your enthusiasm a little more constructively, you could even make them yourself and get them before anyone else does.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: The Ultimate Koopa on November 27, 2008, 05:26:14 am
I asked, he said no. I accepted it, pretty much.
Title: RE: Autovgmapstitcher
Post by: Mikemc on April 19, 2009, 05:11:33 am
1300 images whooo! I only need it sor ~50 :P



- Mike
Title: Re: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: Hikaruon on March 25, 2013, 08:28:37 pm
I liked this software
Currently I used together with Bizhawk , but in my project to mapping, the game use "bottom menu" and this disrupts the map, except if I creat maps do Up to Down.

That software would be nice if it were incorporated into Bizhawk in my opinion.
Title: Re: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: feos on March 26, 2013, 09:06:14 am
Add cropping or a mask not to read the menu space..
Title: Re: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: Hikaruon on March 28, 2013, 09:36:16 pm
Add cropping or a mask not to read the menu space..

Thanks ^^
But, when I was trying to record the video to pick up sky areas, the program Glitchy the map.

https://i.imgur.com/J4R6jrM.png
Title: Re: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: Maxim on March 29, 2013, 12:25:15 am
You need to alter the thresholds to stop that happening.
Title: Re: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: feos on March 29, 2013, 09:21:52 am
This happens when the map has repeating little fragments, the program has no idea where one starts and another ends. Try my predefined settings:
http://code.google.com/p/feos-tas/downloads/detail?name=screenshotautostitcher07.7z
Title: Re: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: Maxim on March 29, 2013, 12:44:57 pm
It's not so much repeating segments as large solid areas. Since they always match at any overlap point, you need to increase the minimum match percentage so it will have to match the other parts of the map as well. There's no optimal settings for every game, you should expect to tune it for every game or even different parts of each level, in the trickier cases.

A more intelligent matching algorithm would try to detect features and match them across frames. This might even be faster than my brute force method, and would not be affected by blank areas.
Title: Re: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: feos on March 29, 2013, 01:37:55 pm
Thinking of improving the tool?
Title: Re: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: Maxim on March 29, 2013, 04:39:38 pm
No :-) It's very simplistic, if someone out there wants to do better then I can give my suggestion on what algorithm to use, but it's a lot harder than just counting matching pixels...
Title: Re: Screenshot Autostitcher
Post by: feos on March 03, 2024, 05:55:39 am
Can't get it to work with video anymore in 64-bit Windows 7 or 10. Had to export the video into an image sequence. Otherwise it can't advance through the video itself, lossless or uncompressed.