So, the wife was kind enough to give me a daddy-cation last month, which I took to go see Steely Dan in NYC.

I also took my nice DSLR to go roam the city streets and collect texture maps, a favorite pastime when I lived there. I’ve collected terabytes of photos that have yet to be tiled, tone mapped and color corrected. Yet an other favorite pastime of mine.

Another thing I did was to try and get decent shots for a photogrammetry idea that I had: create a NYC garbage can. I had been reading on the /r/3dscanning subreddit about it and had tried a year or two back with VisualSFM, with mixed results. I recently read about Autodesk’s Memento and decided I’d give that a try.

I was absolutely shocked when I added the resulting .FBX file to a Unity scene and the sheer level of detail on the street, let alone the sidewalk. the can itself was problematic because it had intricate detail and ended up with several holes in it, I suppose I could fix those in Blender, but would have problems getting the textures realigned.

I’ve seen others recreating rooms in VR using this method, and one of the best ones, IMHO, is the 4th Floor Studio Apartment – while not a game level environ per se, a place I loved putting on my goggles and visiting anyway.