Hey, photography fans, this should be a fun day for you all!

I wish this had come out a year ago, it would have saved me some money.

What is it? Its a program to do photogrammetry that makes it fairly easy to create a 3D model from a folder full of decent photos of practically anything. You also need some other software, like MeshRoom. But all of it is free!

For years, a number of fields have been much more accessible to people who owned Nvidia graphics cards with Cuda. There is another ecosystem, AMD's'. In terms of price versus performance, the AMD owned Radeon cards have been catching up and now offer significantly more performance versus price. If you can use them with whatever tools you need. IF.

However, most ML and cutting edge 3D software still is only runnable under Cuda. This is changing however. Recent AMD offerings are moving forward. If one is willing to work with a bunch of new fairly unfinished software, you can do with fairly inexpensive hardware what used to cost (at least) twice as much using Cuda hardware.

But, really, it often involves a lot of compiling software from source. And often you run into barriers that sometimes demand you buy new hardware. Its not cheap, either, although it may often be much cheaper than it was before. That's fairly predictable, the fact that things rapidly get cheaper. Enterprise class equipment is very expensive for average users, as it is mostly designed for working with very large data sets, at very high speed. Time is money when you are in many of these fields. However you may be able to rent the CPU power. You could use also older hardware, like used equipment or even find old servers, for free by the side of the road sometimes. I have done that a lot. But they eat up power and that is expensive. A lot of those older machines are basically being given away because they use up so many watts. They will heat your house, too.

To do any of this kind of thing, You basically need accelerated video,

Its a big step ahead now that one can use AMD video cards to do photogrammetry with COLMAP. Now any computer that is used for "gaming" should also work for doing photogrammetry. I could see this also as being super useful for home redecorators or really all sorts of things. Machine learning frameworks. But photogrammetry is great for photographers.

Now you can bring the environment into great free 3D programs like Blender.

If you have any questions, ask. I don't guarantee anything. Howver, I do know mylimits. Maybe I can get you started in the right directions if I dont know. Or know who else to ask.

Ive used Colmap (easy) although I am by no means an expert on any of this. The key is taking even toned, well lit photos that overlap by at least one third (more is better) , in order, Look on youtube for advice on taking photos for photogrammetry. You start this process by taking a bunch of *overlapping* photos of something in a methodical way, For stitching them. These programs use an algorithm called SIFT to auto stitch images together, creating #D models almost like magic. (SIFT means Scale Invariant Feature Transform)

They should have filenames that are numbered or lettered so they are in order. You should keep the same zoom or focus or lens (intrinsics) Best to use a "prime lens" and the same focal length. Ideally the camera and lens should be in the database. Indirect, even lighting like a cloudy sky, is best for photogrammetry.

You may have to compile software from source. Although many people seem intimidated by this I would be happy to walk you through it as best as I can. Yes, you CAN do this, its not rocket science. .
Most important. Have a goal, have a PLAN to do this, and especially
**HAVE FUN**