Photogrammetry guide for minis (28mm) by DapperDan

You will need

Camera (preferable a DSLR camera with a macro lens, where you can set the focal length and
exposure time) but any potato will do.
I use a Cannon EOS 1200D with stock lens 58mm lens

Tripod (or some way to keep your camera still when you take the photos)

Remote for triggering the camera to take pictures, if the camera moves when the picture is taken
you will have a bad picture.

Photogrammetry software (I like 3DF zephyr free, but there are many more)

https://www.3dflow.net/3df-zephyr-free/
https://alicevision.org/ (don’t understand the settings but its open source and others have had a
good experience with it)

Computer with a NVidia graphics card (NVIDIA video card with > 2GB vram and CUDA capabilities >=
3.0) some photogrammetry software can use other graphics cards I think so if you don’t have a nvidia
google around for one that will work for you. There is also cloud based programs but I think they all
are relative price.
-I use a nvidia geforce GTX 1060 6gb

turntable – 3D printed this one https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2348197 but I need to make a

new one as it’s a bit wobbly with only the middle that takes the weight. You can rotate the mini by
hand to but I have not tried that. I would not recommend walking around the mini as but you could
give it a try.

light source (I have a quite strong 18w 1600lm 6500k light bulb e25 socket that I filter through some
baking paper? (the type you have in the oven pretty thin) to get an event light over the area a ring
light around the camera would be even better) you don’t want any sharp light or shadows on from
the model as you have to trick the software that you are moving around the object not that the
object is rotating.

Minis (I have started to only use unpainted minis I do a black/dark gray base with one lighter gray
heavy drybrush and one lighter white dry brush) shiny metal paint or unpainted metal minis are hard
to get a good capture on as they reflect light and you do not want that. Same if you
would have a transparent mini. The matter the paint the better, so minis already
painted are harder to do

Phototent – (more nice to have ) for reflecting the light around the model and
making it easier for you to trick the software that you are moving around the model.
You can probably use a white u shaped piece of paper too.
 Here is my setup

My workflow is to take 25-30 pictures in one height then the

same in a slightly different height (I move the camera up by apr
10-20cm) and do the same pass over again with 25 -30 pictures
all around the model. I have stuck a piece of paper with some
lines that help me space out the photos, you need three photos
from different angels for every area you want to capture (not a
problem when you take the photos from all around the model)

My camera settings are

Aperture f/32 (you want to have the whole model in focus as if parts
are blurry you can get bad results)
Shutter speed 0.6 (you want to get a bright photo with our over
exposing it so it depends on how much light you have)
Iso 100 (but I have this on auto)

The remote and tripod rely helps as its impossible for me not to get a shaky picture without them. Its
good to look through the pictures to remove bad photos as they will only make the scan worse.
It could be unfocused parts of the mini, movement blur etc you need crisp good photos! Shit in shit
out.

I then load the pictures into the pc and fire up 3df zephyr and choose what photos are excessive as I
can only take 50 photos into the program.
It take my pc around 1-2h per model and I cant rely use it at all for anything but surfing the web
during that time as it is pretty resource heavy.

The settings I use in 3df zephyr

Camera orientation
Urban and Exhaustive
Dense point cloud
Urban and Ultra
Surface reconstruction
Urban and High details
Texturing
General and Default single texture
You might need to go into Tools -> options and choose “Enable Ultra Preset” to get my settings,
it can take up some disc space too when its working so make sure you have some available. Around
40gb ish? Bit unsure could be less.
when its run you hopefully have something like this

the blue dots is where the software put the cameras so you should have rings around the model
where you took the pictures.

You can then export it as a .obj file and load it into your 3d program of choice, I use blender-
https://www.blender.org/download/

To edit the file in blender you need to open blender choose import –> wavefront (.obj) then find the
file.

My go to fix for the models are first orient it via selecting the object then pushing “n” to get the
Transform menu on the right side and setting the models Rotation to 0 on all the three values.
then pushing 7 on my numpad and rotating the model to face downwards.

Then to get rid of the excessive parts of the turntable that came with the model I press 3 on my
numpad.
Then go into edit mode via the drop down menu in the top left side (should say object mode now)
Then go to wireframe mode via pushing the letter “z” then selecting wireframe mode.
Then try and select as much as the mini without selecting to much of the stuff you want to remove
via the drag box tool. When its selected you can press “ctrl” + “I” for inverting the selected are and
press “x” and choose delete verticals, then you need to go around all the model and delete the extra
parts that you don’t want.

To fill holes under the model you can go into edit mode then choose edge select

and hold down “alt” and double left click the lines that are on the edge of the hole, it should select all
the edges around the hole and you can press “alt” + “f” to fill it. You might want to “poke face” and
subdivided It if your planning on editing the area.
when you have cleaned up the model don’t forget to save it and try out the sculpting part its pretty
intuitive and relaxing going around increasing parts and using the crease tool to crease stuff.
use f for brush size and shift f for strength. Its easier to click to enable dynotope and use constant
detail with a pretty high resolution 40 -80 if your pc is up for it and smooth shading. There are
hundreds of learn blender videos on yt.

Don’t forget to save to different file names.