What it is
Walk around a room filming with a phone. A processing pipeline picks the sharpest frames, works out where the camera was for each one, and rebuilds the room in 3D: a model to look around, a mesh to plan in Blender, and a watertight file of any part to print.
A printed marker of known size in the shot gives the model real measurements, in metres.
Why we want it
First for ourselves: to lay out the Caisse furniture in the cottage on a computer before cutting any plywood. Later it could help record heritage buildings and objects around Akaroa, and print small models of them.
How it works, briefly
The video is uploaded to a rented graphics computer that only runs while there’s a job. Open-source tools (COLMAP, GLOMAP, gsplat, Blender) do the heavy lifting, and the results come back to the workshop. The heavy computing happens elsewhere, so it needs no special computer here.
Where it stands
The pipeline is written and its software image is built. We paused it on 21 October 2026, before the rented computer was switched on. Nothing has been scanned yet. When it restarts, the first scan will be the workshop itself.
Les plans sont gratuits — the plans are free.
