2026-11-08

Starting a photogrammetry project

I'm starting a photogrammetry project. The goal: take photos of a real object with my phone and turn them into a USD asset that works in NVIDIA Isaac Sim, a robotics simulator. The question I want to answer is how close I can get with the least effort.

The plan

1. Photograph the object with my phone.
2. Build a mesh and textures from the photos.
3. Clean it up in Blender: real-world scale in meters, origin at the bottom center.
4. Export it to USD.
5. In Isaac Sim, give it a collider and mass, and drop it.
6. Put the real object and the sim side by side and write up what I learned.

Where this is going

This first object is practice. My bigger goal is to scan a whole ceramic studio: the space, the tools and the pieces people make there. Then the artists could share their work in AR and VR: put a bowl on your own table through your phone, or walk around the studio in a headset.

I haven't picked the first object yet. I'll post updates here as each step gets done.