photos for building interiors

I’ve had some experience with RC alignment of large interior structures, and can offer the following:

  • I’m happy to say that you will likely have better luck than you imagine with plastered walls, as long as you shoot with plenty of overlap and frame tightly enough to capture the mesostructure present.  That is, while from 15’ away a white plastered wall is effectively featureless, at ~5’ there’s actually enough detail in the stippling to participate in the overall reconstruction.  If shiny black surfaces are the worst, shiny white surfaces are a close second – but plaster without a top coat is very much Lambertian, so as long as the surface isn’t glossy you should be OK.  Do resist the urge to cross-lighting the surface to help accentuate the ‘tooth’ of the wall, given my second point below:

  • Your instinct to provide more light and better exposure is a good one, but try not to change the lighting angle dramatically between light positions.  While all SfM feature recognition tries to be light invariant, that’s a tall order.  If you’re able to treat your scene as a connected series of distinct zones and then arrange lighting for each that shifts only a bit between poses, you’ll be happiest in the processing phase.