you mind re-linking to that other thread so I can see their method (you accidentally linked back to this thread).
Getting it all in one scan isn’t a big deal for this shoe, since it’ll be easy enough to either manually combine separate scan models or model it manually. But for future scans it could prove useful to figure out a bit better.
well that’s super interesting. Curious if you know the explanation as to why having a totally different background works (although it looks like it works, it seems to go against everything I’ve learned about RC so far). I can’t wrap my head around how this wouldn’t cause RC to just not match the images completely. Is it because RC will discard this background info since there is no overlap and only keep the main subject since it is detecting overlap in the main subject?
Ha, excellent questions!
RC seems to be doing things a bit differently at times compared to other software.
I think it’s a bit of a numbers game - the surface that’s on most of the images wins.
It works similar when you get a noisy surface (in extreme cases a recognizable doubling), which is most often caused by misaligned cameras. The effect is imho caused by the two misaligned sets of cameras battling for superiority, meaning in some areas one group has more images, in others the other group and the algorythms then cause the surface to jump back and forth between the two possibilities…
Interesting. I’ll give it a shot next scan I do!
I was just studying this guy’s work this morning to try and decipher how he was getting such amazing results. Looking at the viewport image he posted of his shoe scan, it appears he might be using your suggested technique to great effect (it appears the majority of the shots are of a shoe sitting flat but you can see some with it laid on its side). He only used 195 camera in this scan and got way better results than my last shoe scan test using 700 grrrr Oh well, I’m learning more every time!
Oh, it’s Vlad! Probably one of the best out there… 
You’re not too far off though, I think.