[Bf-python] Camera Calibration "Extension" - Initial Release

[Jonathan Merritt]

Hi Everyone,

To get the ball rolling on a few things, I've got my act into gear and 
released a version of my camera calibration extension:
    http://www.warpax.com/pytsai/index.html

As a perfectionist, it's painful for me to release something that is 
less than 110% complete, but I wanted to have something real out there 
to get away from boring "vapour-ware" discussions. :-)  Now you can see 
what this extension involves (script + Python extension module), and 
have a play with it.  Bear in mind that I consider this a "working 
prototype" rather than 100% publicly-releasable code.

I would probably recommend against attempts to incorporate the Python 
extension module directly as a Blender extension module at this point 
(although that should definitely be the goal).  I believe that there is 
little benefit to be gained from that effort until much more work has 
been done on the underlying C calibration code.  This extension can be 
developed and used outside of Blender, and I see little reason to 
incorporate it into the main code while it's still quite kludgy.  (The 
only main benefit from having it directly within Blender is that it 
could then have direct access to Blender's maths code, which may 
eventually be important.)  If someone wishes to use the extension module 
in the mean time, all they need is to have a separate version of Python 
installed on their machine, which is a very minimal requirement.

(NB: There are other extension modules, for things like marker 
identification and tracking in images, which would be much more 
worthwhile incorporating into Blender right now! :-)

I would, however, like to see a home for this extension somewhere in the 
blender.org CVS repositories.  If that's possible, I would be very 
happy. :-)

I have also started an Elysiun thread for this topic.  I'm not sure how 
many Elysiun users will have any success with the extension (since it is 
a little more complicated than an isolated script or script bundle), so 
I'm posting to this list too, for the benefit of developers:
    http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=311456

Jonathan Merritt.