Are you sentimental about the home you grew up in? Drone technology could help you out when it comes to capturing the magic of your childhood as you can now use drone footage to create a terrain model, which you can then 3D print.

Drone Deploy is an automation and analytics package which uses drones to create accurate 3D terrain and architectural models – whether this is of your childhood home, or your soy field.

The company said on their website: “We see tons of 3D models at DroneDeploy, which is pretty cool – people are using our software to process their drone imagery all around the world. But lots of these 3D models would be even cooler if they could be physically touched, instead of just manipulated on a touchscreen. So wouldn’t it be cool if we had one 3D printed? Well yes, yes it would.”

How Can I Use This Technology?

Drone Deploy decided that a great use of their technology is to capture the magic of a childhood home. They said: “There’s something about a childhood home that stays with you forever. All the smiles and tears, those feelings of having your whole family – your entire world – all together at once. For most of us, those memories fade as the foundation of the home gradually outlives our innocence. But when we return after long departing, as we drop our bags to the ground, we’re welcomed back by an old friend who knows us like no one else ever could.”

Ian Smith did exactly this with his childhood home. If you’re interested in capturing this magic yourself, then the process is pretty simple, if you have your own drone that is. All you need to do is fly the drone around the house in a circle, remembering to take oblique images every couple of seconds.

Once you have captured all of your images, you can upload them to DroneDeploy for automated processing. To create the 3D model, the bitmaps captured on the flights give an explorable, manipulable model.

Once you have this model, you can create an STL file, which you can use to run it through a 3D printer, or send it to a 3D printing company. Make sure to check out the video below to help you out if you’re tempted to create your own 3D print from a drone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=208&v=W8P2uRChmYc