A mesh surface texture onto a flat plane?

Hello there everyone

Just wondering whether anyone can help / point me in the right direction?

I’m really enjoying playing around witih Polycam - which produces basic 3d models from your phone.

Whilst on holiday recently I used Polycam to create a very basic model of a church which grabbed my attention.

I’ve imported the 3d object into SketchUp as you can see below, but obvioulsy it’s essentially just one big phototextured mesh.


I’m having a bit of a brain fart and can’t think if there’s a way to project the texture from the front of the church onto a plain face so I can get the rough sizes and dimensions of windows and doors etc? Polycam orthorectifies the imagery to a reasonable level so doing it this way will be better than doing it ‘by eye’.

Any help or info greatfully appreciated. :slight_smile:

I do this sort of thing quite often.

I usually take various Sections through the mesh then use ‘Create Group from Slice’ and build the model from those Groups. It can be laborious but also very accurate if that is what you are after.

Regarding the position of windows etc, these can be traced straight onto a surface created in the same plane as the elevations then moved into position.

Best of luck with it. :+1:

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Many thanks for the reply. Will investigate that method for sure. Thanks again.

What a great tool! Had no idea that that even existed! Awesome!

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Out of interest - how easy was it to scan and import your model using Polycam? Did you just download the app onto your phone and create a file that imported easily into SketchUp? I ask because I have my own scanner which cost almost £50,000 but its getting quite old now, and I often wonder if there is an easier way to get a basic scan for the situations where using the scanner is overkill. I am thinking this may prolong the life of my scanner :grinning:

It was super easy and pretty much exactly as you thouight! The Polycam software costs $99 but once you have it I found it really simple to use and to get it into SU.

When you’ve taken your photos it takes a little while to process it in the background of the app, but once done (maybe 5 to 10 mins) it’s available to be downloaded as a .dae which can then be taken straight into SU Pro.

I then tweaked it with Skimp ($69) to simplify the mesh a bit a wee bit, and that’s it!

Am really impressed with it. Even more so know I can take sectons so easily from it!

It really depends whether you need an accurately scaled and oriented ‘metric’ model? It’s pretty easy to produce a model but it won’t have the integrity you get from adding control points / scan data.

I still use a 20 year old total station with reality capture for buildings - i wish i had your scanner!

My ‘scanner’ is just my phone! Doesn’t need to be super accurate as just for visual purposes only. Original question was more just about texture a face from a mesh, and @kevin58 helped with that,. :slight_smile:

I have just had a good look around your site - I really like your visuals :+1:

Do you do everything done in SketchUp? This one was drawn in SketchUp then outsourced together with the point cloud for rendering.

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Out of interest, who do you outsource to? Been looking at similar myself recently. Thanks.

Thanks Kevin; yes it’s all sketchup based (happy to have a chat and see if there’s anything i can help with).

The phone is good enough, it’s getting sufficent good images that’s normally the issue. For tall buildings a uav or remote control camera + pole will make all the difference if you can justify it.

I’ve not got much experience with polycam but the gaussian splat looks cool. If you are curious you could look at 3DF zephyr or reality capture for more control over the photogrammetric process…and from there you could begin to look at high to low poly workflow and uv unwrapping (via blender)…

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I’ve played around with Polycam a bit but if you can, you should really look at Reality Capture on your PC for creating mesh models from photogrammerty.

I export the reality capture model to use as reference for a more simplified model, like what you’re doing here, then export the model to bring back into RC where I rebake the texture onto the new model.

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Thanks for the reply, will check it out!

Pretty new to scanning etc, so taking my time to get the hang of it all.

Out of curiosity, what was the 3D file you generated on Polycam ? Did you try their gaussian splatting tool or is it pure photogrammetry ?

Great work on capturing the church with Polycam! While the initial model is a solid starting point, there are several techniques you can use in SketchUp to refine and enhance its appearance.

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