The LightUp demo didnt work. I couldn't get it to export baked shadows. Anyone with LightUp can you post a small DAE with baked shadow? Im desperate.

28 residential towers 20 - 33 floors, intense landscape below.

There is no secret. It is just photogrammetry tools gotten that good. Take thousands of photos, dump them in,a few days later get the result.

Will xNormal do the job?

1.5 years later. Look what I am doing with photogrammetry now.

The 1st picture is almost a square mile. then zooming to a random detail.

It is all light and moving fast. no overloading PC anymore! the future is here!

Just to get a kick -scroll these pictures up and down a few times.

Sort of Animation.
Acute3D viewer is only flying around photogrammetry model. The only and critical advantage of it is LOD. It has 1 Gb model with details unseen in SU, flying like it is 1k SU model. Amazing. Because Photogrammetry model already has shadows baked in, even medium built PC can process it with no problem. Animating shadows is not an issue, because the environment model already has shadows fixed and cant adjust at all. The only choice is to match the existing environment shadows. Well that is good enough. However, imported geometry looks like crap because it is not shaded.

If I can fix that, my clients will piss their pants from excitement.

So Here is what I got for now - 1.Get the LighUP to export DAE, 2. Use MeshLab (or SU) to make a .OBJ
Right?

How hard is Blender to learn? Is there a way to test this method without committing a credit card number?

What do you think about reimporting LightUp dae into sketchup and export to .obj from SU?

Can LightUp export .PLY?

That works well if the object is in shadow and facing sun. However if it is not facing sun, there is no hope (

Have a subscription for 2 years for pix4d. Strong mature and reliable tool. Neber the less switching to Bently's ContextCapture for their LOD algorythm and crisp models. Another contender is RealityCapture, faster and as crisp. However, not a mature software yet.

Can I get an .obj exported in both cases?

So the 2 choices are:

1. LightUp
2. Blender + bake tool add on

Hello, I need your help. Im looking for existing ways to "bake" SU shadows onto the objects for subsequent export.
I have a huge model of exisiting site in Acute3D viewer (1sq km) trees buildings,topo, road and all. Can clearly see windows on each building. There is LOD (level of detail algorythm) built in so the model moves very fast. Not possible in SU. I import into the scene my design from SU as .obj. This way i can see my project in huge existing environment. Super exciting. The trouble is that Acute3D viewer doesnt project shadows. (Enviromental models already have shadows baked by the sun).
So, i want to color up my design model with shadows prerendered into it. (Baked). Export .obj. and insert into environment.
Any idea how to achieve it?

I cant believe SketchUP still doesn't have emissivness control after all these years.

yeah, the face is in the shadow. any one knows a simple plugin to solve the problem or a workaround?

I have a huge LED screen on the north side of my model. It is always is shadow and always gloomy.
Can you think of any work around to make the texture on LED appear lit up? in life sketchUp without post production or rendering plugins?

That will make a difference.

Can TGI3d handle a few square kilometers of urban areas?

5 pieces under testing:
pix4d
123d Catch
PhotoScan
Smart3DCapture
3df Zephir

hm, that does not exactly look like a massive urban planning model - good enough for rendering. ((
I'm testing now one product. You can see doesns of city blocks in one model and it moves well, looks crisp. http://www.acute3d.com/s3c-samples/
still looking if it really works.

Pilou, any links? any case studies or personal experiences?