3D Scanning a Mountain

[patrick]

Hi!

I am wondering if anyone knows any examples of how an aerial 3D scan of a mountain may be used in any real world industry applications? VFX, terrain mapping,  engineering, geological surveying etc...

This is for a education project - I decided to scan a mountain from a plane but I also need to provide concrete examples of how this could be useful in the real world.

Thanks,

[Wishgranter]

Hi Patrick its for  school project or ?

[James]

This is a good example! Not specifically a mountain, but large swathes of landscape scanned and 'inserted' into a movie:

Recently we've been informed that PhotoScan has been used in landscape model generation for Mad Max movie:
http://www.fxguide.com/featured/a-graphic-tale-the-visual-effects-of-mad-max-fury-road/

[frank.stremke]

hi
i have scaned whole mountains by kite for archaeological research
also i combined aerial and ground based as well as underground scans in a singel model of a mountain with underground quary, just PM me if you need any more details
frank

[Fergy]

See this article, and the more recent one by Lato et al. that cited it for geotechnical analysis and comparisons to LiDAR data

http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/4/10/3006

http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cgj-2014-0051#.VX1ZIROqqko

[patrick]

This is great! Those research articles were very helpful.

I am specifically looking for examples on aerial photogrammetry and why / when it would be used over Lidar scanning. So far my angle seems to be for VFX as a way to use real surfaces and textures and shape as much as possible.

I also think this would be important (especially for the mountain i'll be scanning) for identifying mountain hazards, however I am unsure of the accuracy that a geologist would require for my data to be actually usable? Any tips / research on how I could measure my accuracy or what kind of accuracy I could expect from shooting out of a plane? I'll be using a 5DSR with GPS. I don't intend to actually sell the data, but I also don't want to say this data can be used for geology when it isn't actually accurate enough.

i have scaned whole mountains by kite for archaeological research

I would be interested in know the end purposes of this was? What was it used to find? How was the data used?

[Pixel UAV]

I have a few uses for scanning large mountain areas

-We have one volcano in this region of the world that has a lake in the crater at the top. Every now and again the volcano pushes up and spills the lake over the crater edge.  Accurate models of the mountain have been made to model how this resulting Lahar(volcanic mudslide) will travel down the mountaIn and what areas will be effected.

-A ex lecturer of mine was using photogrammetry to model snow levels on mountains so power companies producing Hydro Power could predict how much water they would get in the spring melt
The same professor  also measured mountain heights of our Alps using photogrammetry and them proved his results with conventional GPS
http://www.otago.ac.nz/surveying/staff/otago027774.html

-there are some government bodies that are interested in scanning large areas of land for modeling coastal erosion.  Done correctly photogrammetry can produce results quicker than LIDAr(or so i am lead to believe)

[frank.stremke]

the data was used to create plans and take measurements of all kinds on quaries which were all over the mountains so we could produce maps from orthos and DEM and alos take all kind of measurements which where hard to do in the field because of the vertical quary face also maybe we did not now we need these measurements wile stil in the field and it became aparent afterwards.
also one of them with an imressive mine inside was used to create a 3d video animation  (anaglyph) which was presentet to the public and will be part of the final publication as a extra dvd
frank