Creators · · 6 min read
Scanning from life: notes from a photogrammetry workflow
From a hundred photos to a web-ready model: capture, cleanup and texture baking for real objects.
Photogrammetry turns photos of a real object into a textured 3D model. It's the fastest route to realism, and the easiest to overdo.
Capture
- Shoot in soft, even light to avoid baked-in shadows.
- Overlap each photo by about two thirds.
- Circle the object at three heights, then add close-ups of detail.
Clean up
Raw scans are dense and noisy. Retopologise or decimate to a sensible triangle count, then bake the high-resolution detail into normal and colour maps.