SmartMatch goes through four stages, which are summarized on the summary dialog:
• Feature detection – where unique definable features are detected
• Matching Setup – where photos are assessed to determine the overlap/connectivity
• Matching – where features are matched to create SmartPoints on connected photos
• Orientation – where the external camera orientations/positions are calculated from the defined SmartPoints.
• If other options are selected (e.g. MVS and Meshing/Triangulation) those stages are summarized as well.
In certain cases (e.g. when photos are determined to lack suitable connectivity), the Feature Detection and Matching Setup stages repeat but at a higher density. A status notification appears in blue text (as shown in the screen capture above) when this happens, and if it needs to repeat more than once, a warning is displayed. This warning message can be disabled – see Preferences - SmartMatch.
All SmartMatch stages use a similar color coded status indicator showing the photo IDs in various colors, along with a timer. An ideal project will show all photos in green, which would indicate good levels of feature detection, photo connectivity, match counts and photo orientation. The colors correspond to states more specifically described in the next sections. The colors update from red to green. Red is a started condition (e.g. not marked, or not oriented), and green is the finishing condition (e.g. fully marked, or correctly oriented).