I was wondering if I’m realistic in thinking I could get a mesh model of a building (maybe the size of a small city block) with enough detail to see cracks in it?
Is this too much data to reasonably process? When I hear about people using drones for inspecting infrastructure, is it mainly through the photos (or first person via a monitor or googles) or could you actually inspect the mesh model?
Happy to share my little experience with you.
Hi Bob,
Something else to consider is that the size of the cracks that you will be able to see in your 3D Textured Mesh will depend on the Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) of your project (https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/202559809). The smaller the GSD, the smaller the cracks you should be able to see.
As for inspection, it might be easier to create a densified point cloud (you will have to create it in any case if you want to do the 3d model) and then use the rayCloud editor to inspect the model. If you click on a pixel in the rayCloud you will be able to see all images in which this pixel is visible, which gives some flexibility for inspection. This is how I’d proceed for inspection work as it gives even more information to assess the issue as when checking a 3d textured mesh.