Are you interested making a 3D model of your home?
In this quick guide, we show you how to make a 3D model of your home and print it with a 3D printer with tons of details.
Just follow our steps and you will be amazed what modern day technology can do for you!
Capture Aerial Images Of Your Home – Step 1
The first step is to capture aerial images of your home with the technique called
photogrammetry. The best way to do this is use a camera drone to capture multiple photos from various angles first, then we use a compiler to stitch together all the photos into a 3D model.
Remove unnecessary things out of the way such as cars, trash bins, reflective objects and other messy things out of the way so later the 3D model is much easier to process.
The most challenging part is to setup the aerial drone correctly so it can orbit around your house and gather all the images. We highly recommend the DJI Marvick, and it features auto flight and orbiting capability to help you do that.
We recommend recording high definition video and then extract the video into single frames pictures to import to the photogrammetry software, and it’s the easiest way to do it.
Convert Images To 3D Model – Step 2
The next part is to compile all the images into a photogrammetric 3D model. The software will assess all the images and create points to construct a 3D model.
Please import only high quality image in a sequence without any interruption to generate the best model possible.
Pro tip: To ensure a successful 3D model generation, drone footage must be high quality with good lighting. Best time to capture aerial images is on a cloudy day.
Clean Up 3D Model – Step 3
After the model has been generated, now it’s time to clean up the model and get rid of any artifacts and they include:
We highly recommend remove trees that were in the shot to make a dedicated house model much easier.
- Bad edges
- Mesh triangles
- Separating shells
- Overlaps & intersections
- Double faces
- Inverted Normals
- Holes
Mesh conversion is like smashing a perfectly smooth mirror, then gluing back together all the bits and pieces to make it look like the original.
If performed badly, the result is not pleasing and it’s very obvious, and it will not convert well to an STL file for the printer. In fact, a 3D printer can’t print a poorly prepared 3D model file.
We recommend saving the .STL files in a Binary format to reduces file size. And in order to retain texture data for the model, please use formats such as AMF, Collada, OBJ, and PLY.
Pre 3D Model For Print
After the model is cleaned up, the next part is to prepare it so the printer can print it.
Add Thickness
A 3D printed part must have minimum wall thickness or detail size to print. Not sufficient wall thickness might lead to lost details, or print failure.
Remove Hollow Parts
For a house model, it’s not necessary to print internal structural parts to hold strength, so adding wall thickness to hollow out the design can save a considerable amount of material and time.
