Photogrammetry with your Phone

One of the hardest things about creating anything in 3D is time – not only the time needed to learn to properly build, sculpt, and polish assets to make objects and scenes look realistic (years really), but also time spent searching and digging through endless online asset libraries to find the perfect  building, object, or person you want in your game or project. What if you could take anything you see in the real world and turn it into a 3D asset to use in the game you’re building, an asset pack, background elements, AR or VR, VFX, or even 3D printing? 

Display.land is a new 3D scanning app that allows users to create accurate, fast 3D captures of real-world environments with very little tech overhead. No more expensive cameras, lenses, or softwares to create photo-real 3d scans. It’s photogrammetry in your pocket – take a couple of minutes to make a scan, upload it for processing, and voila: You’ve just acquired a cool graffitied  landmark, a historic site from 70 AD, a beautifully detailed Indonesian temple, or your best friend.

Credit: Jordy Vandeput @ Cinecom

Credit: OJAlarmClock / Display.land

The Display.land app lets creators scan any location or subject, using only their smartphone, and upload it to their secure cloud servers to create a 3D model. Users can export their model as an OBJ, GLTF, and PLY file formats, which make it possible to use captures from Display.land in Blender, Cinema4D, Unity, Unreal, Maya, or any 3D software for any purpose. And the best part… it’s free! No hidden fees or premium download assets. Just Raw photogrammetry assets from your phone!

Credit: Display.land Scan in Cinema 4D

Let’s take a step back. What is Photogrammetry? Photogrammetry is the art of combining photography with 3D modeling, overlapping a series of images onto a 3D model, to create a fully rendered digital version of that object. This very time consuming and technical process produces really fascinating outcomes – a blend of the digital and real world that is visually striking in any 3D project or game. With Display.land, you can achieve these same results without much time or skill.

Credit: Vale / Display.land

How does Display.land work? Similar to photogrammetry, Display.land creates a 3D model from images stitched together. The app records a video and sensor data, then pulls many images of the same geometry taken from different perspectives to create a 3D reconstruction of the scene. In other words, the app is simultaneously recording a video and tracking your position in space. The dots that appear while recording represent geometric points in the world – when a specific point is captured from a few angles, a dot will appear in your video. 

If you want to perfect your capturing skills, or learn more about Display.land please visit Learn.Display.land for tips, tricks, and tutorials. Most of what makes a good capture is picking a good subject – Pay attention to good lighting, texture and scale of your environment. When recording your capture video, make sure to move slowly and intentionally – similar to recording a video you want to have a planned, steady shot. The best way to improve your capture is to practice! You can also follow @learn in the app for guides on how to tackle specific capture scenarios.

The Display.land community is already capturing around the world – They’ve seen captures in 148 countries & that number keeps growing! Scrolling through the Popular feed (Display.land also functions as a social sharing app) you can explore a park in LA, a sculpture in Copenhagen, or a person in Panama within seconds. 

Users can control their privacy in Display.land – not all captures have to be shared and you can remove visibility or gps features from your capture at any time. 

The future of Display.land is just as exciting as what you can do with the app now – soon users will be able to access Display.land Studio, a drag and drop editor to create experiences inside these captures with 3D elements, including 3D, VR, and persistent, localized AR. 

 Early creators – show us what you capture by downloading the app here for free!