Render a drone or aerial scene

Capture

Fly slow, overlapping passes. Aim for about 70–80% overlap between consecutive frames and cover the subject from several altitudes — a low ring, a mid ring and a high ring. Lock white balance and exposure: auto-exposure that shifts as you fly over bright and dark ground destroys consistency. If you film video, sample it slowly — more frames mean sharper results but more compute.

Camera alignment for large sets

Apple Photogrammetry (the default) is great for 50–200 photos but becomes unstable past about 500 frames in long drone passes — it can crash or silently drop cameras. For large aerial sets use COLMAP (the best quality, but it needs a separate install and the beta build from the website, not the App Store version), or import a reconstruction you solved in Metashape, RealityCapture or PolyCam (this works in the App Store version via File → Import COLMAP / Metashape Workspace).

Settings for sky and vegetation

Use the Outdoor (tuned) preset, turn on Reconstruct Sky Dome and Sky Masking, and turn on Reduce Elongated Gaussians — drone flights over grass and foliage are exactly where needle-shaped splats appear. On longer (Quality) trainings, Mid-Training Floater Cleanup trims dead splats in the sky as well.

Step by step

1. 1
   Capture — Fly slow, overlapping passes (about 70–80% overlap) at several altitudes. Lock white balance and exposure.
2. 2
   Choose alignment by set size — Up to about 500 frames: Apple Photogrammetry. Large sets: COLMAP (beta build) or import a Metashape / RealityCapture / PolyCam / COLMAP workspace.
3. 3
   Outdoor preset + sky options — Select Outdoor (tuned); turn on Sky Dome, Sky Masking and Reduce Elongated Gaussians.
4. 4
   Train and check — Rotate around to judge sky quality and look for vegetation streaks.