One of my goals of the VR research was to create immersive environments by importing real world areas into VR. I found an article by Valve employee Adam Foster about their use of photogrammetry to create environments to explore in SteamVR Home and their game, ‘The Lab’. Adam Foster’s article, along with documentation on Valve’s developer wiki, got me started.

Like Adam Foster, I chose to use Agisoft Metashape for my photogrammetry program for it’s high quality and easily configurable workflow. It has considerably longer render times than other programs, such as Autodesk ReCap or Reality Capture, but the boost in quality is worth the extra time.

I was initially taking pictures with my phone, but the results were no where near good enough quality for VR. I borrowed a Canon Rebel T6, which worked well, but I could only keep it briefly. After researching online and speaking with several photographers, my boss and I purchased the Canon EOS 7D and a 10mm-18mm lens for wide angle shots.

I also tried using 360° camera, the VIRB 360. In theory, a 360° camera should cover a lot more space per photo and significantly cut down on the number of photos needed. While Metashape can be configured to take 360° photos, the distortion and significant decrease in resolution compared to a DSLR made it not worth pursuing. I did find use for the VIRB in 360° videos to be experienced in VR.

After I was comfortable using Metashape and studied the documentation, I began to automate the photogrammetry workflow. I developed a procedure to create 50 million triangle renders after 60 hours of processing. The photogrammetry process was simplified to input a folder of pictures and output an extremely high poly, textured OBJ file.

I still continue to test other programs. Inputting my datasets made it clear that ReCap has one of the best photogrammetry algorithms available. I do want to continue using it, but it lacks the ability to customize its workflow and my own lack of resources make it currently impossible for me to use.