The scenProc IMPORTGDAL step to import imagery data assumes that the imagery you use is georeferenced in some way. So for example as GeoTIFF or as BMP file with an accompanying world file. But that is not always the case of course. Some developers use unreferenced images and provide the needed coordinates in the INF file for resample.

Therefore I have now added a new step to scenProc that will read these INF files: IMPORTINF. This will go over the INF file and for each image defined in there add it as a feature to scenProc with the correct georeferencing. Afterwards you can use the image in the DETECTFEATURES step for example.

The scenProc feature to detect holes from imagery often returns polygons with holes, especially in area with dense forests and some clearings in the forest. When the ProcessHoles option is set to true the holes will be processed for the output of the detect feature step as well.

But I have to give a warning, for big and complex polygons the output is sometimes corrupt. I will try to fix that issue, but for now you can improve the output by first applying a split grid step to slice your imagery into chunks. When the detect features step is run on those chunks the output is better in general. See an example configuration file below:

IMPORTGDAL|..\geo\imagery\gtif_wgs84_4band\321778.tif
 #
 SPLITGRID|0.001
 #
 DETECTFEATURES|FTYPE=RASTER|filter_ndvi_test.tfc|OBJ|FOREST
 #
 MERGEGRID
 #
 EXPORTSHP|OBJ=FOREST|trees_test

As you can see I used quite a small grid (even smaller than the autogen grid). In the end I use a merge grid step to combine all the cells again and export them as one shapefile. That shapefile I can then use in my further processing to autogen.

An added benefit of the SPLITGRID step is that the performance of the feature detection gets better. When I ran it on the image as a whole it took around 4000 seconds, but now with the small chunks it takes only 300 seconds. So for better performance using split grid is also a good advice.

When you want to process bigger quantities of data with scenProc the graphical user interface is not always the easiest way to do this. In that case it is much easier if you can call scenProc from a script, for example a batch file. This is already possible for a while, but yesterday I have made some changes to make this mode of running scenProc even more powerful.

Let’s just start with some details on how to run scenProc from the command prompt. Below you see the syntax. The first argument you provide is the configuration file you want to use. The /run argument tells scenProc to directly run the configuration after opening, so that you don’t have to press any buttons to start it. This will also ensure that scenProc automatically closes when it is finished. The /log is optional, but when you provide it the messages from the event log are written to the indicated file when the processing is done. This allows you to check what happened later on.

scenProc myfile.spc /run /log mylog.txt

So far for the batch options that were already available (only the argument to generate the log has changed). What I have added now is that you can also pass additional variables into the scenProc configuration. This makes it possible to use one template scenProc configuration and customize using the variables exactly what will happen.

Let’s give an example. Let’s assume you have a folder with different shp files and you all want to process them with the same scenProc configuration. Then you should call scenProc each time with a different filename as variable. For example:

scenProc myfile.spc /run /log mylog.txt input13.shp

In your configuration file you will also have to make a change. Your configuration file would become like this:

# @0@= test.shp
#
IMPORTOGR|@0@|*|*|NOREPROJ
#
SPLITGRID|AGN
CREATEAGNPOLYVEG|FTYPE=POLYGON|{guid}
WRITEAGNFILES|FSX|texture

As you see in the IMPORTOGR step we don’t provide a filename, but the user variable number surrounded by @. You should always start counting from zero and the number is the order in which you provide the variable from the command prompt. While running scenProc will substitute this special code with the value you passed.

As you can also see I put a special comment at the top of the file. In this comment I also assign a value to the special batch variable. This value in the comment is only used if you run from the GUI, so that way you can still test your configuration. But when running from the command prompt it is ignored.

But of course you can use this to pass other things than file names. You could also use this to process your data in parts. Let’s take this configuration file as example:

IMPORTOGR|country.osm|@0@;@1@;@2@;@3@|*|NORPROJ
#
SPLITGRID|AGN
CREATEAGNPOLYVEG|FTYPE=POLYGON|{guid}
WRITEAGNFILES|FSX|texture

In this case the user variables are used to specify a different bounding box for the data to read. So you can specify different extends every time you call scenProc and thereby process a big area in pieces, without having to preprocess all your data.

I hope this feature is useful and I’m sure some of you will come up with even more interesting ways to use this.