Photogrammetry

One of the few good things about the L train being closed for maintenance over the weekend, is that it’s a great opportunity to create a highly detailed 3D scan of the Morgan Avenue L. I captured this over the course of two sessions using only a camera, capturing a total of about 10,000 images.

This is the Blue Temple in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The weather was overcast the whole time I was onsite scanning, so this is one of the most de-shadowed scans I’ve ever done, and it displays very well in Unreal Engine. This model was captured using a mix of drone and mirrorless camera, and was featured as a puzzle in the Puzzling Places virtual reality app.

This is Railay Beach just outside of Phuket, Thailand. This beach is quite famous and therefore usually quite crowded, but this scan was captured shortly after Thailand reopened after the 2020 pandemic so it offered a rare opportunity to scan such a place. The location was featured in the opening sequence of the Jason Statham movie Meg 2.

This is Badshahi Mosque in Lahore Pakistan. It is the largest Mughal era mosque, and a central landmark of the city. I enjoy going on solo scanning trips to locations like these in order to practice techniques, and I was able to spend a few days here working out a new system for automating drone flights around structures.

This is Dolce Acqua, a quaint little medieval village in Italy that was made famous when it was painted by Monet. This was one of my first attempts at creating a large scale photogrammetry model using GIS data and automated drone flights. Most of this model was captured while I was sitting outside and drinking coffee at a cafe just across the river.

This is a convent in the center of a small town called Izamal in Yucatan, Mexico. One of my favorite things about doing large photogrammetry scans like this is that you have a reason to go to a fairly random place in the world, and then spent a lot of down time just hanging out while you scope things out, wait for weather, wait for drones to charge, etc etc. It’s a great reason and method to travel. It took me about three days onsite to fully capture this.