Matterport Pro 3D Camera Photographers: 11 Tips for Capturing Magical 3D Models

WalkAround™ 3D Tour of 6 Columbus Circle, SIXTY Loft Penthouse | A SIXTY Hotel. Takes about 10 seconds to load. To walk around, use the arrow keys on your keyboard; check-out the dollhouse and floor plan views (lower left icons); click to fly-in and walk around | WalkAround™ 3D Tour by We Get Around Chief Photographer Dan Smigrod

by Dan Smigrod, Founder, CEO and Chief Photographer of We Get Around

When our We Get Around Atlanta team of Matterport Pro 3D Camera Photographers capture spaces, among the things we think about are:

  1. Scans for walking
  2. Scans for helping make the floor plan look great
  3. Scans for helping make the dollhouse look great
  4. Scans for the Virtual Reality (VR) walking experience
  5. Scans for improving the Object File (.obj) mesh
  6. Scans for walking outside in daylight
  7. Scanning for walking outdoors at night
  8. Scans for capturing screen grabs within 3D Workshop
  9. Scans that allow "stretching" golden hour light as if it lasted five hours. 
  10. Scans where it makes sense to change the camera height
  11. Scanning to avoid direct sunlight in windows, mirrors and skylights

For this We Get Around WalkAround 3D Tour – powered by Matterport – of the two-story Columbus Loft Penthouse at 6 Columbus Circle in New York, for example, we only use 44 of the 104 scans captured during our five-hour 3D shoot that could have been accomplished in about an hour. The other 60 scans are deactivated in Matterport 3D Workshop. We treat every WalkAround 3D Tour as an opportunity create art within the limits of the Camera that does not allow us to change any of the setting such as f-stop, shutter speed, ISO and white balance.

"Stretching" golden hour lighting, for example, meant capturing the space almost twice. First, to shoot the entire space. Then, to have the luxury of just capturing the "magic hour" scans upstairs and downstairs. In the master bathroom shower, we just needed to add one "magic hour" scan in the shower.

The day-light lighting did not matter for the stairs and the bathrooms, but to scan these spaces, we needed to scan connecting spaces knowing that some of the spaces would need to be re-shot.

While bathrooms are often the smallest spaces in a model, they often take the most time to capture because we are scanning in bath tubes, around toilets, behind doors so that the dollhouse and floor plan views looks great (as well as the mesh), BUT we deactivate these scans (unless the view from the bathtub  is great. You'll notice that's how we are able for you to see the vanity/mirror without seeing the camera in the mirror.

I added a night-scan on the balcony closest to Central Park. That mean waiting sometime after sunset to add this scan. That was possible because I stayed in this Penthouse that night, so no one was waiting to check-in.

While it's hard work to make it look so easy, but being a Matterport Pro 3D Camera Photographer has its perks.

Would you like to schedule a WalkAround 3D Tour – powered by Matterport – photo shoot? Please Contact Us

Take a We Get Around WalkAround 3D Tour of 6 Columbus Circle.

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Dan Smigrod

http://about.me/smigrod