mjm Posted May 8, 2019 Share Posted May 8, 2019 4 hours ago, jeff prince said: @mjm I never needed up doing that stadium in VW due to time constraint. However, here's something you all might enjoy following... I saw this post shortly after you made it. Amazing work. So, you're flying the drone yourself? Quote Link to comment
mjm Posted May 8, 2019 Share Posted May 8, 2019 I'm sure I speak for many others who would enjoy following your progress on this project. 2 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted May 9, 2019 Author Share Posted May 9, 2019 4 hours ago, mjm said: I saw this post shortly after you made it. Amazing work. So, you're flying the drone yourself? Thanks! Yes, I am self-taught in the black arts of drone operations and Vectorworks 🙂 I started with the drone in December of 2016. I started dabbling in VW sometime in 2017, though I haven’t generated any meaningful work with it yet. Here’s my first stab at a drone story a few weeks after purchasing the craft. This all stated as a toy for documenting my motorcycle and travel adventures. Then I figured out it could make work a little more interesting and productive 🙂. I’m looking forward to getting back to filming some motorcycle action for fun in the coming months. 2 Quote Link to comment
mjm Posted May 9, 2019 Share Posted May 9, 2019 Holy heck. So, is that footage straight out of the drone's camera, no exposure or color edits? If so—dang thats pretty. What camera? Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted May 10, 2019 Author Share Posted May 10, 2019 5 hours ago, mjm said: Holy heck. So, is that footage straight out of the drone's camera, no exposure or color edits? If so—dang thats pretty. What camera? Thank you. Yes, that is raw footage... shot on an overcast day... with default settings. I barely knew how to operate the drone, but I did know what I wanted to achieve. The overhead straight down shot of the bikes was cropped and panned to enhance the appearance of gaining altitude. It was shot with the first gen Mavic Pro using an iPhone as the controller screen. During many of the shots I could barely see my framing or the bikes due to glare and just focused on the road and where I thought they would be. All of the flight and gimble moves were done manually too. 3 Quote Link to comment
RussU Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 (edited) 5 hours ago, jeff prince said: done manually too Brilliantly piloted!!! Lovely shots. There's some lovely videos on youtube about setting up your gimbal for really nice cinematic shots. My mavic wasn't great out of the box, but after some tweaking, it's super smooth now. See the attached file, and @jeff prince your video 3:20 - 4:10. I'm really enjoying seeing where our industry is going. Exciting times! Who know what's in store in the next few years! RockFace.vwx Edited May 10, 2019 by RussU 3 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted May 10, 2019 Author Share Posted May 10, 2019 2 hours ago, RussU said: Brilliantly piloted!!! Lovely shots. There's some lovely videos on youtube about setting up your gimbal for really nice cinematic shots. My mavic wasn't great out of the box, but after some tweaking, it's super smooth now. See the attached file, and @jeff prince your video 3:20 - 4:10. I'm really enjoying seeing where our industry is going. Exciting times! Who know what's in store in the next few years! RockFace.vwx Thanks, that was a fun day. you are right about the gimbal, it was pretty touchy before I configured it. That and I got the feel for the wheel now 🙂 I’ll have to take a look at your file next time I’m in front of VW. Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted May 12, 2019 Author Share Posted May 12, 2019 On 5/10/2019 at 12:50 PM, RussU said: Brilliantly piloted!!! Lovely shots. There's some lovely videos on youtube about setting up your gimbal for really nice cinematic shots. My mavic wasn't great out of the box, but after some tweaking, it's super smooth now. See the attached file, and @jeff prince your video 3:20 - 4:10. I'm really enjoying seeing where our industry is going. Exciting times! Who know what's in store in the next few years! RockFace.vwx @RussU That rockface turned out really nice. What did you use to produce it? Quote Link to comment
RussU Posted May 12, 2019 Share Posted May 12, 2019 1 hour ago, jeff prince said: What did you use to produce it? That particular one was done in Agisoft Metashape Pro. I took your footage and turned it into tif at 5fps. I wasn't expecting it to come out well, because youtube adds some compression which can mess up the footage on occasion. 2 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted May 12, 2019 Author Share Posted May 12, 2019 1 hour ago, RussU said: That particular one was done in Agisoft Metashape Pro. I took your footage and turned it into tif at 5fps. I wasn't expecting it to come out well, because youtube adds some compression which can mess up the footage on occasion. That is an impressive result. 1 Quote Link to comment
Landartma Posted February 8, 2022 Share Posted February 8, 2022 Thanks for turning me on to this string. Really cool stuff. Is the drone work profitable for you or are you in hobby mode with it. I have a realtor friend who uses it and had to get a license. But I'm in Massachusetts the land of licenses. So I'm not sure if it federal or state. I've started with VW from Dynascape in 2020 and with limited time to really dig in I'm finally getting into 3d modeling. It would be really cool to make measuring more efficient. Psyched to hear about the tools your using can't wait to get there. BTW your real generous with info here...Just wanted to give you a shout out...Thanks! 3 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted February 8, 2022 Author Share Posted February 8, 2022 33 minutes ago, Landartma said: Is the drone work profitable for you or are you in hobby mode with it. I have a realtor friend who uses it and had to get a license. Glad it helped. Started as a hobby for travel photography, became useful as a tool one day when I discovered photo to model and aerial photo capability 🙂 It’s really more of a time saving and site analysis tool for me. I essentially get an immersive model and 100s of photos I can revisit, which is great when your job sites are 1000s of miles away and you forget to snap a photo of something. I usually get surveys done and use my drone based model as a place holder until better data arrives. License and insurance highly recommended, or hire a drone company to protect yourself. Drone companies save you the time and effort learning how to use the tools. Just make sure they are licensed and insured too. FAA administers the licensing and rules. 3 Quote Link to comment
Claes Lundstrom Posted February 9, 2022 Share Posted February 9, 2022 ... or you can use a poor man's drone, an iPhone 13 Pro 🙂 and Scaiverse Poor Mans Drone.mp4 3 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted February 9, 2022 Author Share Posted February 9, 2022 1 hour ago, Claes Lundstrom said: ... or you can use a poor man's drone, an iPhone 13 Pro 🙂 and Scaiverse Poor Mans Drone.mp4 1.46 MB · 0 downloads But can you scan 100 acres in 30 minutes 🙂 I have to admit that the iPhone scanning has been surprising me lately. I used it on a snow covered slope and was able to locate trees fairly accurately. Quote Link to comment
Popular Post Claes Lundstrom Posted February 10, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 10, 2022 23 hours ago, jeff prince said: But can you scan 100 acres in 30 minutes 🙂 I have to admit that the iPhone scanning has been surprising me lately. I used it on a snow covered slope and was able to locate trees fairly accurately. My comment was perhaps not intended to be all that seriously for city planning 😉 The iPhone can be surprisingly useful for smaller projects. The movie was just for fun and was actually created by the iPhone program itself. The purpose of this scan was to analyse a drainage problem on a 30 x 15 meter area. The scan took say 5-10 minutes as the site was rather steep and slippery. The model imported fine into VW though I hade to fit the YZ from this particular program. Converting the model to a DTM seemed to take forever, so instead I placed a plane at a given height and traced the intersections manually in a separate layer not using snapping. I then moved the plane a given distance and repeated the procedure until I got a series of 3D polygons, which was used for creating the DTM. I also did an illustration of the shape using a series of vertical grid surfaces to visualise the shape to the non technical people. 5 Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 8 minutes ago, Claes Lundstrom said: My comment was perhaps not intended to be all that seriously for city planning 😉 The iPhone can be surprisingly useful for smaller projects. The movie was just for fun and was actually created by the iPhone program itself. The purpose of this scan was to analyse a drainage problem on a 30 x 15 meter area. The scan took say 5-10 minutes as the site was rather steep and slippery. The model imported fine into VW though I hade to fit the YZ from this particular program. Converting the model to a DTM seemed to take forever, so instead I placed a plane at a given height and traced the intersections manually in a separate layer not using snapping. I then moved the plane a given distance and repeated the procedure until I got a series of 3D polygons, which was used for creating the DTM. I also did an illustration of the shape using a series of vertical grid surfaces to visualise the shape to the non technical people. This is what I was interested to know: how you go about converting the scan into a DTM. Is there a way to use the Analysis Tool to quickly place a grid of 3D Loci on the surface of the object + then create the Site Model from these, rather than the manual tracing method you describe...? 1 Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 I guess the advantage of manual-tracing is that you can exclude non-terrain objects/features whereas the 3D Loci wouldn't... 1 Quote Link to comment
Landartma Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 So you can scan 100 acres in 30 minutes with an I Phone? Using the 3d modeling functionality? It gives elevations? Locate individual trees and I imagine rock house corners? How accurate is it? Quote Link to comment
Claes Lundstrom Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 1 hour ago, Tom W. said: This is what I was interested to know: how you go about converting the scan into a DTM. Is there a way to use the Analysis Tool to quickly place a grid of 3D Loci on the surface of the object + then create the Site Model from these, rather than the manual tracing method you describe...? I used the this manual method as VW does not seem to like meshes having a couple of hundred thousand triangles. As I mentioned, I generated a flat rectangular 3D polygon and used that as a working plane. The trace takes place that the intersection between the flat plane and the 3D model, a bit like something sticking up on a water surface. I started at the lower corner of the house with Z = 0. I then went to the top (not top plan) and traced the contour around the intersection between the flat plane and the 3D model using OpenGL rendering (or whatever it's called now). I used 3D polygons but it can just as well be 3D loci. Also important to do the tracing in a different layer with no intermediate snapping going on, as VW then freaks out completely. Once one level is done, you simply move the flat plane up some distance, in my case I used 0.5 meters, and traced it again. Remember to move the working plane to the new level. Etc. The result was indeed a site model. Details such as trees are easy to insert when required. 3 Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 4 minutes ago, Claes Lundstrom said: I used the this manual method as VW does not seem to like meshes having a couple of hundred thousand triangles. As I mentioned, I generated a flat rectangular 3D polygon and used that as a working plane. The trace takes place that the intersection between the flat plane and the 3D model, a bit like something sticking up on a water surface. I started at the lower corner of the house with Z = 0. I then went to the top (not top plan) and traced the contour around the intersection between the flat plane and the 3D model using OpenGL rendering (or whatever it's called now). I used 3D polygons but it can just as well be 3D loci. Also important to do the tracing in a different layer with no intermediate snapping going on, as VW then freaks out completely. Once one level is done, you simply move the flat plane up some distance, in my case I used 0.5 meters, and traced it again. Remember to move the working plane to the new level. Etc. The result was indeed a site model. Details such as trees are easy to insert when required. Thanks @Claes Lundstrom. Would you consider posting a file with an example scan on it? Does it come in as a Mesh object? I'm really interested in this but don't have an iPhone... Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted February 10, 2022 Author Share Posted February 10, 2022 1 hour ago, Landartma said: So you can scan 100 acres in 30 minutes with an I Phone? Using the 3d modeling functionality? It gives elevations? Locate individual trees and I imagine rock house corners? How accurate is it? No, that’s a drone capability. The iPhone is limited to slow walking speed and about 20 minutes, depending on how complex the subject and/or ambient temperatures. It’s reallly easy to overheat the iPhone when scanning. 2 Quote Link to comment
Tom W. Posted February 10, 2022 Share Posted February 10, 2022 1 minute ago, jeff prince said: No, that’s a drone capability. The iPhone is limited to slow walking speed and about 20 minutes, depending on how complex the subject and/or ambient temperatures. It’s reallly easy to overheat the iPhone when scanning. Are the scans georeferenced? Can multiple scans be accurately stitched together? Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted February 10, 2022 Author Share Posted February 10, 2022 23 minutes ago, Claes Lundstrom said: I used the this manual method as VW does not seem to like meshes having a couple of hundred thousand triangles. As I mentioned, I generated a flat rectangular 3D polygon and used that as a working plane. The trace takes place that the intersection between the flat plane and the 3D model, a bit like something sticking up on a water surface. I started at the lower corner of the house with Z = 0. I then went to the top (not top plan) and traced the contour around the intersection between the flat plane and the 3D model using OpenGL rendering (or whatever it's called now). I used 3D polygons but it can just as well be 3D loci. Also important to do the tracing in a different layer with no intermediate snapping going on, as VW then freaks out completely. Once one level is done, you simply move the flat plane up some distance, in my case I used 0.5 meters, and traced it again. Remember to move the working plane to the new level. Etc. The result was indeed a site model. Details such as trees are easy to insert when required. This makes me sad. There are tools which can create contours or points of your scan that can be imported into VWX. Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted February 10, 2022 Author Share Posted February 10, 2022 5 minutes ago, Tom W. said: Are the scans georeferenced? Can multiple scans be accurately stitched together? yes, you can do that with either a drone or phone scan. 1 Quote Link to comment
Popular Post Claes Lundstrom Posted February 10, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 10, 2022 1 hour ago, Landartma said: So you can scan 100 acres in 30 minutes with an I Phone? Using the 3d modeling functionality? It gives elevations? Locate individual trees and I imagine rock house corners? How accurate is it? The scan was more like 10 minutes. You don't get mm precision, for the most part more like within say 10 cm. Heights seems to be more accurate for some reason. To check I measured a seven story stair, and compared it to the real heights and the heights where off by something like 2-3 cm, so the fluctuation was not clearly distinguishable from fluctuations of the eighty year old concrete house. At the most heights where possibly short by say 2 cm on a 2.7 meters height of each floor. The scan was essentially done by walking from the top downwards in the stair, at say half the speed I normally use, while gently moving the camera back and forth. Time, say five minutes at the most. The picture shows a hybrid of scan and measurements. The back side drifted a little in shape due to bad access to a corner. When scanning large objects, it's important to do it using slow and gentle movements. Limitations. The lidar can only measure up to about five meters, so tall buildings are impossible without a drone. Size, just to mess with it, I had a walk around a small local lake, having a circumference of about two kilometers, As you can see from the second picture, it started to get lost about half way around it, but when I made a copy of the cans and rotated it around the point where it got lost, the second part actually worked fine. I placed it on top of a satellite map and the result was surprisingly good, considering that it's not really a measuring device, it's a PHONE. I checked regularly against the water surface to see if it drifted in height, and it basically didn't. It also freaked out completely at about 1.7 of the 2 kilometers, though the data wasn't lost. It just slowed down to a crawl. 5 Quote Link to comment
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