Creating a custom snowglobe of something you love takes a bit of effort. We know these directions are a little odd, but if you don’t follow them to the letter, we won’t get a good scan, and then we have to start all over and refilm it.
The 3D process involves you sending us raw video of the object you want to engloben. We can do small objects or big; it’s covering all angles with video that’s important. Please don’t process it or compress it. Then you send it to us using our upload link, below. *Please* make sure to tell us you’ve uploaded it and include your name in the description on WeTransfer.
Note: if you don’t feel like you can get a good video, you can always contact us and we’ll get you a professional drone operator to come out and video your house for you.
Video:
To create a 3D scan, we’ll need video of the outside of the house; the video should be approximately 10-20 minutes in length.
- Tidy up a bit? You might want to move your cars, close the garage doors, think about anything you *don’t* want to display in your snow globe (we’re looking at you, Halloween jack o’ lanterns!).
- Film on a GRAY day. Cloudy days are best. If the sun won’t hide, then really you want to wait for one. Even lighting is what we want, or shadows will make the coloring of your model dappled and weird.
- Film your house by walking around it FOUR complete times. The first two passes, walk clockwise. The second two passes, walk counter-clockwise.
- Film in landscape mode, holding your phone sideways, so that the video is wider than it is tall. Make sure your phone is filming at its highest possible resolution. You can raise the resolution in your phone’s camera settings. ** Note: we’ve been having trouble scanning video taken with the Samsung Galaxy phones. If you have one, let us know.
- Film in ONE continuous take. Do not start and stop the camera for different parts of the house; film the transition between these parts, too. Don’t switch out cameras.
- Stay in constant motion while filming. Do not stand still – it’s the movement that makes the scan work. Standing still and turning (like a lighthouse) doesn’t count. Keep walking.
- Film at a distance from the house so that the entire house is visible on screen, if possible. For most houses that’s a distance of at least 40 feet. If you cannot get at least 10 feet from your house on the ground, consider getting drone footage from the air.
- When going around a corner (for example: when transitioning from the front to the side) try to capture as much of the two sides on the screen at the same time. Some people are tempted to just film the sides; instead try to get good coverage of the corner.
Example video (speeded up):
All done? Upload! Please upload from your phone; don’t transfer to your laptop and send it from there. Then please let us know on Etsy messaging that it’s been uploaded and the filename you sent us. Otherwise we may not know whose video belongs to whom!
P.S. Uploading may take a bit, especially if your internet connection is a tad slow. Please be patient. If you can’t get it to work, try using Google Chrome to connect to the upload site instead of Safari.