I work in events and make 3D renders with layouts and decoration placed into real-world city locations (SketchUp + V-Ray Pro). My goal is to recreate a real plaza/street as a digital twin that's as accurate as realistically possible, correct building proportions, textures, and measurements so my decoration mockups sit believably in the actual space.

I have basic experience with SketchUp, V-Ray, OpenStreetMap, and Google Earth.

The problem I keep hitting:

• PlaceMaker doesn't give usable results here in Europe (no high-quality 3D building data).
• Google Earth's 3D mesh for European cities is low-res / restricted due to permissions.
• So there's no ready-made accurate model to pull from.

What I'm trying to figure out:

1. What's the best realistic workflow for this today?
2. Is a genuinely accurate digital twin even feasible solo, or am I chasing something unrealistic?
3. Should I use drone photogrammetry and/or Gaussian Splatting to capture the site, then rebuild/clean it in SketchUp? Or is there a better pipeline?
4. Roughly how long should I expect per location?
5. How do people get accurate measurements — laser measure + manual survey, total station, or pulling dimensions straight from photogrammetry?

My setup: MacBook Pro M4 Max, 64GB RAM, latest SketchUp + V-Ray Pro. I can capture my own reference (site photos + tape-measure dimensions — examples attached) and I'm open to learning/buying new tools if the workflow justifies it.

Any proven pipelines, plugin recs, or "don't waste your time on X" advice would be hugely appreciated.

https://preview.redd.it/q9ox60hzbh2h1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=e2daa62c2b2ce60764b245435c46ea6071b2b397

Hi everyone, my name is Max. I’d like to share the story behind ScanWOW, my first independent photogrammetry project. ScanWOW is a 3D scan library that we (I and 2 my friends) started building not because of a big business plan, and not because we wanted to launch “ mjust another marketplace".

If we simplify it, everything started with one onion.

In 2021, i was working on another DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2. I needed to create a simple scene: vegetables in bags and boxes, sold by roadside “babushka.” Nothing special or complicated. Just a small roadside asset that would make the environment feel more alive and believable.

https://preview.redd.it/5epggy8gah2h1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=a120bb1031360fd6992e27e5df3ea0ee4afb1866

In my work, i often create large and complex assets: administrative buildings, skyscrapers, Gothic churches, cars, trucks, buses, locomotives. Usually, these are the kinds of things that look like real production challenges.

But that time, the problem unexpectedly turned out to be a simple onion.

I did not need a perfect scan. Not a highly detailed hero asset. Just a good, usable onion that could be placed in a bag of vegetables.

So i started searching. And i quickly found out that finding a decent scan of an onion was not as easy as it sounds.

Some assets were low quality. Some were missing textures. Some looked acceptable only in the preview. And anything reasonably decent started at around $20.

That was where it started to feel a bit absurd.

Paying dozens of times more for a digital onion than for a real one felt like a strange idea. Especially when you do not need just one onion, but a whole bag of them. One object did not solve the problem: we needed different sizes, shapes, shades, small differences, and a sense of natural variation.

In the end, i found something after spending several hours and going through one refund. Then i still had to manually change the size, color, and shape to create the illusion of variation.

And that was the first time the thought appeared:

>

At the time, that thought did not turn into a project. I simply remembered that small pain.

A few years later, i finally had a chance to return to the idea more seriously. I saved up some money, bought a camera and a lens, started studying photogrammetry, testing different approaches, and thinking about whether the scanning process could be automated enough.

That was how ScanWOW began.

A year and a half of development by a small team of three people - in parallel with our main work. During that time, we built the website, started filling the library, assembled our own automatic scanning machines, and created the first working pipeline.

We now have 4 scanners for different tasks: small objects, medium objects, large objects, and for atlases. We also designed and printed our own circuit boards, automated a large part of the process, and tested a lot of things in practice over the past year.

https://preview.redd.it/0qra7fkjbh2h1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=a57bcf52b0b7740de9659fccc933270dc63c7136

https://preview.redd.it/ybl9akmkbh2h1.png?width=962&format=png&auto=webp&s=e7a635c65042450a2a668ff8be2c0eb1f72aa847

https://preview.redd.it/n2pranilbh2h1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=7ed925e7d14ef7704b020d7506eaa76ef30f104d

I will talk about the scanners separately. There are too many details for one introductory article: early mistakes, photometric stereo, mechanics, cameras, lighting, circuit boards, software, automation, stability, maintenance. That is a whole separate story.

For now, I will just say that the process pulled us in deeply.

We started with a fairly simple idea: to create high-quality 3D scans of ordinary objects. But we quickly realized that if we wanted stable quality and decent speed, we needed to build a system. Not just “take photos of an object,” but control the entire path: shooting, lighting, color, processing, textures, asset structure, publishing, and future updates.

The main idea behind ScanWOW remained simple:

>

We do not want to make one perfect onion. We want to make sets. Not one potato, but several variations. Not one rock, but a group. Not a random beautiful prop, but a library of objects that can become a solid basic toolkit for 3D artists.

For similar objects, we try to keep at least 5 variations. For objects where variety is especially important, 10 or more. We tried making 20 variations of one type, but with a team of three people, that quickly starts to feel like madness. So now we are looking for a balance between quality, quantity, and common sense.

https://preview.redd.it/ipmac4oubh2h1.png?width=1488&format=png&auto=webp&s=a40efc5a8eb7d5ada424d0b2191ee48e2ce7d072

Free access is also important to us.

We want people to be able to visit the site, download assets, test them in their projects, and calmly understand whether the library works for them. Without buying blindly and without dealing with refunds.

ScanWOW has free basic access, and the entire library is available through it. For many users, that will already be enough. And if someone needs more advanced formats, resolutions, or commercial use, that is the next level.

There are currently around 600 assets in the ScanWOW library.

https://preview.redd.it/3nislxowbh2h1.png?width=1488&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf0952ebf6ba773f7cd905895c0d497e32809c52

Our internal goal is to improve the pipeline enough to minimize human intervention as much as possible and eventually reach up to a hundred new assets per day.

Honestly, we already understand how to get there. We have working hardware, tests, experience, and a list of mistakes that need to be fixed. The main limitation right now is not the idea or the technology, but the team. To close the gaps in the pipeline, bring the tools to a proper state, and speed up production, we need more people and resources.

But even in its current form, the project is already alive. The machines are running, assets are being added, and the website is developing.

And for me, that is the most important thing right now.

I do not want ScanWOW to remain just a nice idea or an internal experiment. I want it to actually help artists, developers, students, and small teams — anyone who needs 3D assets without unnecessary pain.

This article is the first part of a larger series about ScanWOW.

Next, I will talk in more detail about:

• how we started with experiments and the first prototype;
• what we shoot with and why we decided to build our own automatic scanners;
• how our scanning and processing pipeline works;
• what we consider a good PBR scan;
• what mistakes we have already made;
• how we want to scale the library further.

For now, you can visit scanwow.com, download the assets you need.

We are grateful for any kind of activity — feedback, requests, questions, bug reports, or simply seeing ScanWOW assets used in real work.

And if you need something specific, you can leave a request in our Discord channel:

https://discord.gg/N5G9HCyd4p

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I am working to create a model of an underwater reef and used GoPro13s on a bar that were synchronized on the surface using "Camera Tools for GoPro Heros". The cameras synchronizations worked well and allowed me to have fewer passes over the reef to cover the survey area.

Using the newest version of Metashape Pro, I have been making models using the a few minutes of photos at a time as I learn the software.

After I align the photos they are being placed on a the base map in the right hemisphere and often close to the actual dive site, but since the gps looses signal underwater, I get some junk locations that stretch my 10 m x 10 m plot to 50-80 km plots greatly distorting scale. Is their a setting I am missing? How can I mask the location data for several hundred photos at time?

Separately, are their any parameters in the Metashape camera settings to correct for the underwater refraction, vs the F-stop and focal length metatdata that comes imbedded in each photo

I'm wondering a few things like what is the best software for mesh quality?

What kind of camera should I get there are alot of cheap ones on the local version of Facebook marketplace that look good but what should I look for. Right now I have a s23ultra?

I have a pc with an i7 9700f 32gb ram 4070 and 2060 I'm guessing that I should get a bigger cpu and more ram or should I focus on a fancy camera?

From what I understand it's more photos = better mesh?

I'm mostly working with car parts anything special I should think about for that or any general knowledge?

Thanks in advance:)

im looking for something thats cheap or even free im looking to 3d print a door handle replacement for my car as honda doesnt produce these parts anymore and third party sellers charge up the ass for simple parts, thanks

Heya, I am getting to photogrammetry. I have a decent understanding of photography. I do have the right equipment. I seen that a polarised sheet might be needed for cross polarisation.

In terms of lighting, I really wanted to get the godox AR400 but seems impossible to find and perhaps too expensive?

Are there any alternatives to the AR400, would a normal flash and an adaptor work. I am also into 3d printing and could potentially work on an adaptor.

What are you thoughts on any possible not crazy expensive alternatives?

Thank you

I am working on a project currently where scanning human limbs is involved

So I was curious whether the above methods (Photogrammetry or NERF or Gaussian Splatting) could be accurate enough to achieve an accuracy of under 0.5mm in the reconstructed models.

As per title, I’m wanting to know your full workflow process. I.e., how are you scanning/creating models?
What kind of files do you work with? Raw data files, textures/images, exported files?
How do you share your files around? Do you use screenshots?
Do you have any pain points through out this process?
Would you prefer to share via a model viewer?

Why do I care?
I’m working on a 3D link sharing site, I’ve made some optimisations in my backend pipeline to hopefully load larger models (200+mb) in seconds and wanting know with these larger file types what your processes are.

Any information would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

I want to recreate my hands in 3d in order to create a synthetic dataset of bone keypoints so I can train an ai to detect them on my actual hand in a webcam. I can already do the ai stuff on other datasets but i want one that is perfectly labeled.

What free software should I be using to scan my hand and what pitfalls should I be looking out for?