Rock Photogrammetry (For Video Games)

Photogrammetry pipeline used on rocks that I own. This pipeline is best suitable for video games where the final model densities need to be optimized from the scan data.

Agisoft Metashape was used to process the photos of the rocks I took (approximately 50 photos per rock). A high and low geometry model was then generated in Metashape from the images. Diffuse and normal map textures were baked down from the high to the target low poly to capture the details of the scanned rock while maintaining a suitable tri count. This is a non destructive process and any target tri count for the low poly can be set before baking textures. Textures source files are 8k resolution.

The intent for these rocks would be for Unreal 5 / next-gen engines. Their densities would depend on how big some of these rocks could be scaled up and still be believable. Some of the rocks look like miniature versions of large rock faces and thus could potentially cover larger areas or act as terrain sections. Tri count can be lowered without losing much silhouette details for rocks that would be less than a metre or so across.

Used Nikon Z5 Mirrorless DSLR for photo capturing.