Billy Lopez is a Designer at Fat Pencil Studio
Skyebrowse is a 3D scanning application that merges drone video, flight data, and terrain data sourced from Google Maps. It manages to merge these items into an accurate digital 3D representation of a location. Within minutes of a scan, you can be viewing a survey of the same location on your tablet computer or device.
The most unique aspect of this tool over others in this field is not only the speed, but the ease of use as well. Scouting the location for flight was the most complex portion of the process.
View of site from Google Maps
For a test run, we chose to visit the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) here in Southeast Portland. The site provides a variety of unique building forms that would be challenging to create using our typical 3D modeling tools.
Still image from flight
Following a site walk-thru to check flying conditions, we launched the drone about 200ft in the air to face our subject. The Skyebrowse application took over from there, and piloted the drone in two smooth orbits of the site, recording video along the way.
After the survey was complete, the flight data and location were automatically uploaded to a project file linked to our account. It was a simple matter to login to the website, locate this project, and upload video clips from the flight. The upload and processing time was under 15 minutes.