Hello, first, I would like to know what you mean by “failing on the alignment step.” Are you seeing any errors? Does RealityCapture crash? Or do you simply mean that you get multiple components, and all photos are not aligned in a single component?
To get complete components with all cameras, you need to follow the same rules that apply if you are scanning a smaller object with a regular camera on the ground.
To summarize it you need:
- Good Image quality. Images must be sharp, in focus, with deep depth of field, without blur and noise
- Subject coverage. For RC to reconstruct the subject, the entire subject must be captured within the set of images. If there is a gap or missing information in the images, RC cannot fill that gap. For this reason, many images are taken of the subject from differing angles to ensure 100% subject coverage within the images.
- Information overlap. Information overlap is necessary because every single point on the subject needs to be visible in at least two photos in order to be reconstructed. If it isn’t there is no way of triangulating the point. To provide RC with enough information to complete this task, scan images need to have approximately 70% overlap.
We don’t have a dedicated drone scanning material, but we will add it soon. In the meantime, check out the following materials to learn more about the scanning process. As I wrote, the same principles apply when scanning with a camera from the ground or from a drone. The difference is that a drone might be programmed to fly along a pre-defined flight path.