A 123D Catch model of a Tent Ring

The first frame in the video is a similar angle to this photo

This is an experiment using Autodesk 123D Catch to record a surface tent ring prior to excavation.  I was inspired by Matthew Betts great post-excavation models from his work this summer in Nova Scotia.  The 3D model shown here was rendered from 20 photos taken approximately 15-20 degrees apart in a circle around the structure.  I'm pretty happy with the results and regret not recording more features in this way, before and after excavation.  The rendering took about 30 minutes back at home, although I spent most of a day fussing with saving the video clip and uploading it to Youtube.  My desktop has poor video capabilities and I wasted half a day on it before giving up and redoing it all on my laptop.

Click the full screen button to see more detail.

In order to make the models you need to upload all of the photos that you want to use to the 123D Catch website, where they build the scene and send you an URL where you can retrieve it.  I had internet access over the summer, but it wasn't fast or reliable enough to do that much uploading/downloading - but here at home the whole process takes a few minutes.  This particular scene worked for me on the first pass without any additional editing.  I just had to trim some edges to create the clean rectangle in the video clip and then set up the animation track.

This is one of the 20 photos that I took on a particularly foggy day to build the 3D model in the clip.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast