Hi All,

I received the following email from a Forum Member today (22 June 2017) in reply to a Dan's Tip of the Week eNewsletter (to Forum Members).

Dan

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Hi Dan

Thanks for this email as always they are really informative. I was wondering if you could help with a problem I am having. I completed a tour for a restaurant last year and I scanned there balcony no problem. I have now been asked to go back and scan the other 3 restaurants but know that I am now struggling to scan balcony's even when not in direct sunlight.

Do you have any hints or tips you can share.

Regards

[redacted]

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Here are three things that can go wrong (and how to succeed)

1. Scan Failure – if the Camera can see the sun, it's likely you will get scanning errors. It's also possible that the sun could "bounce" off a building and into the Camera. Solution: scan when the Camera can not see the sun directly or reflection off a building. (We Get Around Atlanta uses Google Earth before showing up to know where the sun will be for outdoor terraces, decks and patios. When we show up, the first thing we do is use the Compass app on our iPhone. This helps determine where to scan so that the sun is never an issue.

2. Stitching Errors - a deck, patio or porch may have thin railings/posts. Sometimes you'll see bad stitching errors. We Get Around Atlanta does two things to help eliminate on minimize this. 1) scan 3-4 feet from the railing (not always possible) and have the Matterport Camera stop so that it is facing the railing. This will reduce or eliminate the stitching errors.

3. You Can Not Tell on your iPad that the space is scanned – typically, this is a result of rays of light. If you can when the Camera can not see sun - or reflective sun - you should be okay. If you don't "fix" this problem when scanning, you will have "holes" in the dollhouse view that do not look nice. We had this problem with this town home in Atlanta that we scanned last week. The only time the agent could let us in to scan was at 2 pm which meant we would have the sunlight problem as described above.

If you used Google Earth, you can manage your client's expectations about why you need to start scanning at "x" time rather than "y" time to make the dollhouse look nice. And, I can appreciate that while we - you - care about this, the client doesn't always care. Often "good enough" is fine with the client.

Tip: When the data on the iPad is showing up as not scanned, I would try lowering the camera to see if that helps capture the data and do multiple scans in the area. Then in Workshop, hide these extra scans.

What else? Other problems scanning decks, terraces or patios - other than sun related?