RE: Surveying Mountain area with Phantom 4 Pro

Stephen Connelly — Sun, 01 Oct 2017 17:05:33 GMT

Agreed, the best solution is a combination of nadir and oblique Point of Interest photos, especially in a densely forested area, the POI photos have a better chance of picking up detail under the foliage. Your photos need to contain as much terrain as possible. CC Editor has functionality for extracting terrain from your 3mx model, but if the tree cover is too dense, then I can't see how the mesh can model anything other than the canopy.

Another advantage of taking POI photos in combination with nadir is that you should be able to fly at a lower altitude, thereby improving the precision of the mesh.

It looks like part of your site includes steep valley walls. You may have problems finding satellites while trying to fly missions with the Phantom 4 Pro if you take off from the bottom of a narrow bottomed/high walled valley. The automated flight apps need GPS. You might find that GPS is available once the drone is in the air. Then you can use POI app in lieu of taking nadir shots, but if you have no nadir canopy to accompany the POI shots, be sure to overlap the circle patterns of your Point of Interests to make it easier for Aerotriangulation to succeed.

The water in the photos you posted is insignificant and will not affect CC processing. CC struggles with stitching photos containing bodies of water/reflective surfaces/areas with little geometry.

RE: Surveying Mountain area with Phantom 4 Pro

Chaiwut Nikasap — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 17:09:13 GMT

Cover the desire area by your drone with Nadir and POI oblique images , set one or two extra GCP to the corridor area your desire to have territorial photo, shoot picture territorial for each point more than 3 images for great stack process in CC , try first aerotriangulation with aerial photo, after get well result then add territorial photo, then create 3 tie point which should cross over the territorial photo and aerial photo. After that submit again aerotriangulation if not work see setting one pass to multi pass . So if everything ok in 3d view go on make model. Beware Phantom 4 Pro get not good RMS cause of its VDO camera but if not care go on.