I have recently to been experimenting with photogrammetry, the process of creating a 3D model from a series of overlapping photographs. I hope in the future to use this technique with my wildlife images.
In the meantime in order to understand the technology and appreciate its limitations I have been making scans of hard surface objects in my local area. The most obvious and appealing of these object has been that of my local church in Buckland St Mary. The church is heavily decorated with both gargoyles (stone figures that carry water away from the church) and grotesques (purely artistic stone carvings) both of which have been a focus of my scans.
To make theses scans I have been using the Polycam app on iOS, which I then import into blender for my final editing and rendering.
From a photographers point of view, the big advantage with scanning these objects, is being able to relight them afterward (in my case using blender) to better show the sculptures form and texture, that would be either very difficult or impossible to do with conventional photography.
One of the Grotesques or hunkypunks seen on the side of Buckland St Mary church in Somerset
A 3D print next to the digital scan
Taking one of these scans I was able to 3D print my own version of the grotesque.
Here is a video straight from the polycam app showing the original scan
A view of Buckland St Mary church in the Snow
Again using the Polycam app I made a scan of the entire church. The resulting scan (which you can see below) is not nearly so clean as a result of the limited access to all angles of the church. However I was able to use this scan as a guide for building a new 3D model of the church. I’ll admit to not being the best hard surface modeller but I was able to 3D print a nice approximation of the church
A 3D printed model of Buckland St Mary church
A video from the polycam app showing the raw scan of the church