Before the Flight: Automating Drone ArchViz

You know how it goes. You start a project, and most of the first days go into the surroundings, because the first impression, the first preview, is one of the most important moments with a client, if not the most important one. In my studio this is one of the most frequent problems and one of the biggest time sinks. The client needs it here and now, so we fill the scene as fast as we can, sometimes with plain volumes around the project, just so it doesn't sit in an empty void.

The light matters just as much from the very start, and it costs time too, especially when the client wants the sun from the real position and not a fake that won't match reality later. Then comes the long round of approving angles, light and everything else.

Only after that does the next stage begin. We work out the camera height for the aerial views, check the camera position against the map, and set the camera parameters so they match the drone photo we're preparing all of this for. With all these approximate numbers we send a pilot to the site to shoot photos and 360 panoramas at the time we name. Usually that's a window, from-to, because naming the exact hour is a good way to guess wrong, and flight time is expensive.

And when the photos arrive, another stage starts. Match the cameras to the photos (that's time). Match the light to the photos (that's time). Then match everything again in post, because the first fit is never perfect (even more time).

Because the technical part is the same every time, there's almost no time left for the creative part, or you simply lose the desire for it. So I decided to automate as much of the technical work as I could and give myself and my team more room for the creative side, which also means better work.

What it turned into

It started as a tool for our own studio. Over time, watching what came out of it and how much we actually used it, I decided it should go to other artists too. It's called ValTerra for Autodesk 3ds Max, a plug-in for Autodesk 3ds Max 2024 to 2027. Here's how the same pipeline looks with it.

The surroundings. In the ValTerra panel there's a 3D globe of the real world. I type an address or coordinates, frame the site, select the area around the project, and it comes into the scene as geometry. The photorealistic 3D tiles come in through credentials you supply, your own Google Maps Platform key or a Cesium ion token, under your own agreement with that provider, and that provider bills you directly. Read their terms before client work. If a clean schematic context is enough, ValTerra builds it from OpenStreetMap: buildings at the heights the map knows, roofs, streets at their real width, trees, all on real terrain. Either way the project stops sitting in a void from the very first preview.

Caption: Schematic city: Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). openstreetmap.org/copyright

The light. On the same globe I pick a date, drag the hour and watch the shadows on the real site. When the view is right, the camera and the sun come into the scene together, as a Physical Camera and the ValTerra Sun placed for that place, date and hour. I can also make a contact sheet of one view at every hour of the day and send it to the client, so they pick the mood before anyone renders anything.

Planning the flight. This is the part I like most. The pilot no longer flies "somewhere between six and seven". We already explored the light virtually and know which morning and which hour the facade catches it, and from which height and angle.

Matching. When the drone photo lands, ValTerra reads its metadata and builds the camera from it. Then I click a few matching points on the photo and in the scene, and the solver refines the match. In one measured case it brought a 197 px error down to 0.56 px RMS, and over the development we've run camera match on more than 400 real drone photos from five DJI drones: Mini 3 Pro, Mini 5 Pro, Mavic 2 Pro, Mavic 3 and Mavic 4 Pro. The render doesn't sit near the photo, it sits in it. All of this runs on your own machine, the photos never leave it.

In our studio, what used to take days of approximate numbers and hand-matching now usually fits into an afternoon, and the time that frees up goes back into the work itself: the materials, the mood, the story of the image.

Why I'm sharing it

Simply so artists get more creative space. When the routine is gone, the work itself feels better, and I think that shows in the images.

If you want to try it, there's a 30-day trial with every feature and no card, and after it a free Lite version stays with you (Lite places the 3ds Max Daylight system instead of the ValTerra Sun). Everything else is at getvalterra.com.

About the author

Valerii Nikulin

Creative producer, Head of Production / CTO in visual content, author of ValTerra