(Full disclosure: I started the free and open source project OpenDroneMap):
I have been playing around a bit lately combining OpenDroneMap and blender to great effect, especially considering my lack of blender experience. From landscape scale reconstructions of entire cities to scanning smaller object, it’s a lot of fun.
Just one tip: set --camera-type to brown with lots of photos from lots of angles, and you’ll get great scans.
Also see Meshroom.
Definitely. Meshroom is a pretty interesting offering: well integrated with the blender environment and based on AliceVision which is a fork of OpenMVG, a great project in its own right.
I did have some issues when I first started trying Meshroom as it was using the SIFT algorithm by default, which at the time was not legal for anything but research purposes due to patent constraints. I think the SIFT patent has expired or will soon, so I’ll be taking another look.
I am just excited that we got OpenDroneMap up to the point where it provides such nice photogrammetric output. OpenMVG’s level of quality has been a target for the project for a few years.
Cheers
very interesting
what kind of drone do you need to do 3D scan and use it in blender ?
and what kind of cost are we talking here ?
thanks
happy bl
For small scale projects, I don’t use a drone, but just a camera and lots of pictures ‘orbiting’ the object at a few different heights.
For things like larger landscapes, I am pretty happy with the DJI Mavic Pro, which when I bought it was around $860, though there are a lot of good options at different price points. The Mavic Mini is promising ($4-500), but there are limited flight planning options for it at the moment, which makes automated flights that optimize data collection for 3D reconstruction somewhat more difficult. I think it will orbit object though, which is pretty useful for reconstructing individual buildings, trees, and other structures.
There are a range of really great Free and Open Source options as well. For those, this link has a pretty good review: https://dojofordrones.com/drone-flight-controller/. I personally use a mix of FOSS and DJI options depending on a host of factors.