In this example, you have the overview shots in blue, the first top down level in green, and another detailed top down level in red.

Software

There are two main competitors, Agisoft Photoscan and the rather new Reality Capture. I have mostly been using Photoscan but started using Reality Capture recently. I wouldn’t say one is much better than the others, but as of late, the industry seems to be shifting towards Reality Capture.

Here are my pros and cons for each software, please remember I am still relatively new to Reality Capture and could get a few things wrong.

Agisoft Photoscan Reality Capture Pros Good Documentation and tutorials online Insanely fast when processing, really you may not have the time to get coffee sometimes! Good filtering tools to remove unwanted points after alignment Doesn’t seem to create as many holes as Reality Capture Can handle thousands of picture on a modest rig Texture quality seems to be slightly better in Agisoft for me I never had a crash yet, rare enough to be mentioned The standalone license is pretty cheap at 179$, cheaper than Reality Capture in the long run. Cons Pretty slow and uses LOTS of RAM, your scan can be pretty limited in resolution if you don’t have a beast of a computer Creates more holes, and needs slightly more manual alignment. Although, this could be down to my settings not being perfectly tuned yet. You have to carefully pick your pictures because your computer probably can’t handle all of them. Most parameters are very obscure and lack documentation and examples. You probably won’t get super high resolution meshes for the same reasons. Feels too much like a all-in-one-click solution. Great when it works, a pain when it doesn’t and you have to try to fix things. Subscription system makes it more expensive in the long run (6+ months)

I’d probably advise beginners to start with Reality Capture, it will be more tolerant to badly taken shots, furthermore you can compensate bad quality shots with a good quantity of pictures that Agisoft would probably not handle on your computer.

However if you plan on using photogrammetry only from time to time, in the long run, it is probably cheaper to go for the standalone Agisoft licence.

Peculiarities

An amazing super high detailed scan might just not look nice in your game without a good artistic eye beforehand.

The most important thing, and hardest of all is tiling. It is something you have to be aware of at all times, especially while scouting for a piece to scan. Many people ask me : “Isn’t there a faster way to tile textures and automate it, for instance using Substance?”

90% of the time no there isn’t.

I guess it all comes down to the belief that tiling is about removing seams. Well yes I guess it is, but that’s less than 10% of the tilling process. The real work is balancing frequencies and features throughout your surface and make sure that the texture will still hold when repeated many times. This is something that, in most cases, cannot properly be automated yet.

Maybe we should not call that “tiling” but “composing” instead.

Do not focus only on the seams, move things around in your texture, remove that large pebble that stands out too much, etc…