Importing Drone Scans

Extensions
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Hoping to tap into the collective SketchUp brain trust here.

I currently have a SketchUp Pro subscription and am running into some workflow challenges with drone scan data. Our drone scans export as OBJ + MTL files, and right now we’re importing them into Blender first to prep the model before bringing it into SketchUp. It works, but it’s definitely not streamlined.

Ideally, we’d love to skip the Blender step altogether if possible.

A few questions for the group:

  • Is there a SketchUp extension or product that supports importing OBJ/MTL files directly (or otherwise handles drone scan data well)?

  • Are there any native SketchUp tools or third-party plugins you’d recommend to simplify this workflow?

  • Any best practices for working with drone scans or photogrammetry models in SketchUp?

Appreciate any advice, tools, or real-world workflows you’re willing to share. Thanks in advance!

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Using Blender you can easily clean up and simplify your 3D scan. You can remove unwanted elements or rebuild textures, and then create a low-poly model with the repainted/baked texture.
But if you want to skip this and just import a 3D scan, simplifying it upon import, there are several extensions: Universal Importer, Skimp, Transmutr, etc…
Do a search on the forum and you will find discussions about this.

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Have you looked into Gaussian Splatting? Sketchup now has a native import and manipulation extension. You could also work with point clouds with Sketchup Studio.

What are you scanning and what is your desired outcome?

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Can you share a sample OBJ/MTL file? Is this definitely the only export option you have?

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A native SketchUp Studio extension:

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There’s Skimp by Mind Sight Studios and Transmutr by Lindale, both do a good job of importing and simplifying different file formats.

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Sketchup studio has scan essentials which specifically for point cloud files, there’s also Gaussian splats that can convert photos or videos into point clouds, if you want to convert the point cloud into a 3D mesh on sketchup, you must do it manually, there are tools that make it easier on scan essentials but it’s not automatic. There are other softwares that can do that automatically, like mesh lab and meshroom, you can export from there to any file that sketchup can import, if you want to have OBJ importer you can download Quadface tools plugin for sketchup, it includes an obj importer. If you want to simplify the mesh that uses to be quite dense when you convert point clouds to mesh, you can use the plugins named above in other comments, universal importer is the only one that is free, skimp and transmutr are subscription plugins.

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