My experiences using photogrammetry this week were confounding. Foremost, I experienced some frustration and failure when attempting to model the Weitz music addition.
The music & performance commons addition to the Weitz Center for Creativity opened in 2017. It houses the majority of Carleton’s music program and includes multiple performance spaces of high acoustic quality. Music faculty offices, rehearsal spaces, the music resource library, and teaching studios are also located within this building section.
I used two different programs to model my building: Agisoft MetaShape, and Polycam. Here was my attempted model using Polycam:
I wasn’t very pleased with my Polycam model, especially since it didn’t render ½ of the building scan. I also couldn’t figure out why this happened, since the pre-model scan review showed that I had captured each side of my building.
My experience with MetashapePro was, at first, even more disastrous. Uploading 30 images I took of my building (with some of the images slightly overlapping each other), I asked the program to build a model by aligning points it recognized between the different photos. Unfortunately, my photo set was lackluster for Metashape so most of the photos were not successfully aligned. This left me with a low resolution model of one and some walls of my building:
These experiences left me questioning the capabilities of photogrammetry, but thanks to a historical modeling project I’m working on in a different class, I was able to see the powerful potential of Metashape. After uploading 1,145 still images which I converted from drone footage, Metashape aligned 1,075 of the images to produce a much cleaner looking model
When modeling with photogrammetry, every angle of a building matters. The eaves, roofing shingles, siding panels, shutters, foundation, and more have to be considered and captured for the model to be truly accurate. In my mind, the added value to these parts of a building really differentiate how I view my modeled buildings when using photogrammetry, versus viewing them through a map. Additionally, this process made me curious about the different iterations of my buildings, and what stories might be connected with their construction.
4 thoughts on “Lab 6: Weitz Whoopsies”
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I also really struggled with getting Metashape to actually like and use my photos. I completely agree that the details and background matter far more than I initially considered when we started this process. I will say that the Polycam model, though not fully complete, does a great job displaying the walls that it got right! I was also only able to get one right corner of the house I worked on.
It’s really interesting that you’re first model of Weitz only seemed to load half the building. I wonder if a bulk of your photos came from one side, so that even though you had photos of the whole surrounding, it wasn’t enough to create a full model. I love how you pulled what you have been working on from another class, and I think this truly does a great job of showing the full potential of these photogrammetry applications. I also think it shows that to create a full, clean model, it requires many, many photos in order to confidently line everything up and recreate it.
Thank goodness someone else struggled with modeling the Weitz! I thought I was the only one struggling 🙁 Yeah, the Weitz Center is definitely much more difficult than other buildings because you’re restricted with how far away you can take some of the photos, and there are other difficulties, such as trees, amongst other things. I’m glad your attempts were more fruitful than mine, and hopefully the experience was still fun!
Hi Ian,
I can resonate with you regarding your frustration and failure in modeling a building. I used the same programs as you did, so I am familiar with the concerns that you had while going through your modeling process. Despite your attempts not living up to expectations, I appreciate how you showed what the applications rendered. I agree with your thoughts about how every angle matters when modeling. When I worked on mine, I needed to take new photos as JPGs, and during that time, I made sure to be thoughtful about how specific I wanted each photo to be.