What do you want to learn about photogrammetry?

[viae 2]

For the last 13 years I have worked with the artist Tom Otterness. With Tom and his crew of assistants, I have developed a method of digitizing and enlarging his hand made maquettes, using Rhino to create armatures to hand build full scale patterns for casting, and to design elements for fabrication to meet the hand made features. You may see examples of his work made with this process at Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar, and soon at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania.

 

I have been amazed at the accessibility and affordability of photogrammetry software to digitize and generate high quality, beautifully textured or vertex colored meshes. There is even free software, Alice Vision Meshroom, that is easy to use, and though not as fast as other software, still is able to produce a beautiful result.

 

I want to share the knowledge I have about how to create beautiful, detailed models using photogrammetry, and then how they can be used in a variety of ways, including in Rhino, by artists and designers. I have a short, confidential, one question survey here. The link to the survey helps me to learn the community's interest in the topic and what the needs are without revealing anything about who is replying. Fill it out if you are interested in the topic.

 

Thank you,

Seth

[viae 2]

Here are some good tutorials on photogrammetry and using software such as Meshroom or RealityCapture.

• Full Photogrammetry Guide for 3D Artists from 80 Level

• Meshroom for Beginners from Sketchfab

• Using Free Photogrammetry Software also from Sketchfab

Over the next day or two I will be posting here some images and basic explanations from the process I used for working with scan data in Rhino. This is a process to enlarge sculpture maquettes and to help the artists to refine forms at full scale.

Edited May 6, 2019 by viae

[viae 2]

There were some questions about size restrictions.

 

Here are two quick examples of how one can capture objects both small and large.

 

The ceramic vessel was decimated from a model of 7 million polygons, so very high detail in the original, generated from 88 photographs with masks.

 

The model of the topography was made with 7 photos, taken out the window of a commercial airliner at cruising altitude with an iPhone 6s. Clearly this is not a high quality mesh, but then photographing from 30,000 feet on a hazy day, not with photogrammetry in mind, is not ideal planning.