For this week’s assignment, I made a 3D model of Benton House using photogrammetry. Benton currently houses the Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) Interest House community. I hadn’t heard of Benton House before this, so this was the perfect opportunity to learn more about it. It’s on the block across the street from the Chapel. Collecting photos and the process of 3D scanning the house were fairly straightforward and easy. I used the splat feature on Scaniverse and slowly got each side of the house except the back. Trees on the left side made it a little inconvenient, but it was still very manageable. The hard part of this lab was for sure the photogrammetry on Metashape. My first model, although it was decent, had the walls facing the wrong direction, so I made a second model, and to fix it, I placed markers at points of the house that were present in most of the photos I took. This turned out to be very rewarding, and I got a product that appeared similar to the actual building.
Modeling a building is a much more taxing and immersive experience than referring to a map or a photo. Maps and photos are very limited, incapable of presenting all angles of the house. Creating a 3D model forced me to understand how the building worked in space. To get a good scan, I had to move around the house, slowly moving the camera higher up and lower down to catch every angle in relation to everything around it.
The process of photogrammetry required me to look closely and pay attention to details I would usually miss. As stated earlier, Metashape is a very powerful tool; however, it is not immune to making mistakes. In my first trial, I noticed that the walls of the house were enclosing the entrance/porch and leaving out the garage. Mistakes like these were pretty easy to identify, and while I wasn’t striving for perfection in my model, anyone wanting to use photogrammetry to accurately represent a building would have to look at every minor detail to ensure that the software didn’t overlook or misinterpret any important architectural features.
Jackson, I love the work you did presenting the interactive view of Benton House. I agree with the sentiment that critical focus is required to succeed on this project. There are certain steps that require specific actions to be successful, and you did just that! This project is phenomenal and provides much more accurate dimensions than the work of a normal 2D image that you provided above.
You did an amazing job working around the obstructions to get a very complete model! I’m very surprised you were able to correctly get the trees modeled in the Metashape model. I also used the splat feature on Scaniverse. I felt that it did a good job of making up for human error. I do wish it were easier to get a complete model, as I feel that it’s hard to get a full model of the buildings without missing a wall.
I really like the interactive Scaniverse model that you created, it’s really neat! Nice job with navigating the obstacles like trees and such. I myself had a tough time trying to work around them. I definitely agree that if you plan on making a good Metashape model, you need to consider every detail and how that would or will affect your end product. Nice work!
Jackson your 3D model is very impressive, from what I see you were able to get the roof of the building into your scan which I’m curious to how you were able to do that. I agree that building/navigating a 3D model provides a much better learning experience than looking at a picture.