Applications · 3D modelling from a drone
From a drone flight to a house in 3D.
A 26-second orbit with the drone. From that video, and without the images ever leaving the computer, comes the exterior of the house in 3D: the textured scan and a simple geometry you can work with.
The process and the result, in 34 seconds
It is a house built from shipping containers. The video shows the flight, the intermediate steps and the viewer with both versions of the model.
How it is done
Five steps, all on a home computer, with open-source tools.
Frames come out of the video
One frame every 0.2 seconds: 131 images of the house from every angle of the orbit.
Every camera goes back to its place
The software matches the images against each other, places the 131 cameras back in space and builds a point cloud.
From the cloud, a textured mesh
Eight million points become a continuous surface with the real photographs on top.
The boundary is drawn
By hand, on the model: what matters stays and the rest is discarded.
A simple geometry
Sections at several heights give the real outline. From there come the volumes and the roof, free of noise: the version you can compare with a plan, use to think about an extension or to count containers.
What it is and what it is not
Exterior, not interior
Only what the camera sees from outside gets modelled. Porches and shaded areas come out worse.
No construction-grade scale
This model is not calibrated with field measurements. To measure, you need two or three passes at different heights and a tape measure.
Nothing leaves home
The images are processed locally with OpenDroneMap. Photos of a home do not travel to someone else's server.
The fine result, with more photos
This model comes from a 26-second video. The fine result takes more photos: several passes at different heights, original photographs instead of video and a reference measurement. That is already private work with whoever commissions it.
A warehouse, a house, a plot?
Tell me what you want to see in 3D and what for. If construction-grade scale is needed, we plan for it from the flight itself.