How to create 3D environmental context from drone images

With the tutorial video and our new e-book, you can learn how to combine drones, photogrammetry software and Lumion to create beautiful, realistic 3D environmental context for your designs.

When creating and rendering a 3D planned environment, there are many ways to go about it, from modeling it yourself to using features such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) in Lumion. The method you choose, however, will affect the final look and feel of the renders you’re presenting, and one method may be more suitable than another. Using OSM directly in Lumion, for example, creates white blocks depicting actual building locations, height and volume, but the buildings don’t show any textures and are, for that reason, not very realistic looking. When you need realistic 3D environmental context to serve as the backdrop of your design, you can combine drone footage with photogrammetry software and then render everything together right in Lumion. Whether you are capturing an infrastructure asset, a planned site location or another environment, using a drone is fast and cost-effective (especially compared to some other methods). In a new e-book based on the video at the top of this post, we’ll guide you through this process of capturing 3D environmental context. With only a drone, photogrammetry software and Lumion, you can create fairly accurate 3D models of the environment surrounding a planned building location. You can download the e-book PDF here.