T53. Accessible Photogrammetry with your Phone with Chris Palm

In this workshop, participants will explore a practical introduction to photogrammetry, LIDAR, and Gaussian Splatting as tools for creating three dimensional models. The session combines theoretical context, accessible capture technologies, and hands on experimentation to understand how these techniques translate real spaces into digital forms.The workshop begins with an academic overview explaining the principles behind each method and how they are used to generate three dimensional data. It then introduces free smartphone capture tools and software, focusing on accessible workflows that allow participants to produce their own scans.Participants will move into a practical capture session, working collectively to create models that will later be uploaded and manipulated. The final stage centers on using TouchDesigner to interact with mesh files and transform the captured data in a digital environment.

Outline

1. Academic overview of photogrammetry, LIDAR, and Gaussian Splatting: definitions and basic principles
2. Introduction to free smartphone capture tools and apps, and software for manipulating the output
3. Hands-on session: collective capture of models
4. Uploading and manipulation of mesh files using TouchDesigner

Participants must bring:

1. A laptop with sufficient graphics capability is strongly recommended. Ideally, this should be a graphics-capable laptop such as a Mac with an M2 chip or newer, or a Windows laptop equipped with an NVIDIA GPU (RTX 4070 or better). Participants with more basic laptops can still follow the workflow, but some processing may need to be done on the instructor’s workstation. Since large files will be exchanged during the session, participants are encouraged to bring USB thumb drives to facilitate file transfer.
2.  smartphone for the capture process.

Required software (must be downloaded and installed before the workshop):
Phone Apps
• Luma3D • RealityScan
Windows PC only
• Epic Games RealityScan
Windows and Mac
• TouchDesigner (free version available at derivative.ca — no license purchase required)

The recommended applications may change before the workshop, as this field evolves rapidly and capture tools are continually being updated.