Redrobes blog about playing with the technical side of graphics.

I was pointed at this informative video from Gleb Alexandrov who is showing how anyone with a suitable CUDA enabled machine can do some nice 3D object generation using all free open source tools - but principally Meshroom and Blender.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3lhPKF8qjU

The video has some useful tips about improving the generation of the model in Meshroom by inserting some custom steps into the standard path and then also goes into some considerable depth about how to polish up the model and reduce its polygon count whilst maintaining high definition visually via baking textures which capture the high resolution into textures to apply onto a low polygon model.

Its an interesting journey to see the state of building 3D models using photogrametry over the few years of writing these blog entries. From what might have been considered a niche algorithm review with very rough results to arrive now at a point where its practically photo real. The process is a little convoluted and takes considerable compute to get done perhaps that will improve in the next couple of years but the fact that it can be done for free without too much hassle is really amazing.