Perfect Scan - But Not Level!

Scanning a house, all 516 drone photos were successfully used to create 1 component. However, the model is not level - it has a major tilt back. What gives?

I’ve been using RC for years with my Mavic Air 2 and now I’m running into these issues. I can’t think of anything I’ve done different besides use a new memory card.

All images are geo-referenced. See model below:

Hello @Big_Picture045
Such drones don’t have very precise GPS, which can influence the precision and rotation of your model. As you can see, you are getting quite big and not equal camera position errors.
If you don’t need the scaled model, you can turn off the camera priors before the alignment and process your data again.
You can also use the Set Ground Plane tool to rotate your mesh properly.
You can also try to keep only the upper cameras positions and turn the others off and then process your mesh (as the cameras from the bottom could be even more not precise).

@OndrejTrhan

I find it odd that my other scans for years have never had issues with the GPS. I’ve done quite extensive scans and it has never been an issue. Was something changed in an update? I’ve probably done close to 30 scans with great results over the past few years.

Could there be any other settings to adjust?

Your solution of setting the ground plane tool seems to be the best way to handle this.

Scale is absolutely the most important thing for these scans. I have turned off camera positions and indeed the scan does come in better, however, the main purpose of the scan is accurate measurement. Setting the scale manually would be more of a negative than rotating the mesh manually.

Do you have a least expensive drone that you recommend?

It really depends on the way how the object is captured and how good was GPS signal during capturing (this is changing). There weren’t any changes in the alignment process between the updates.
No other settings to adjust this. You can also use some measured GCPs and let them to georeferenced your model, not the camera priors.

As the scale is important for you I wouldn’t consider the scale from such drones as precise. In this case it is better to have some solid scale placed next to the house during capturing and using that to scale your model.
We can’t do such recommendation.