How to scan a car in under 2 minutes
Practical guide to capturing a clean walk-around video that processes cleanly. Distance, speed, lighting, and the one thing people always get wrong.
By Bury3D team
90% of failed scans come from one of three mistakes during capture. Get these right and you'll never have to retake.
1. Walk slowly, steady the phone
You're aiming for ~30 seconds per side of the vehicle (so 60–120 seconds total for a full walk). Faster than that and the SfM step loses track of camera position. Slower than that wastes your time and creates more frames than the pipeline needs.
2. Keep the car in the frame
The model is trained on the pixels you give it. If you swing the camera off the vehicle to glance at your watch, that frame is wasted. Keep the body of the car filling roughly 50–70% of the frame at all times.
3. Vary your height
This is the one most people miss. Don't walk around at one chest-height the whole time. Squat down at the front bumper, stand at the C-pillar, stretch up at the roofline. The reconstruction needs height variation to triangulate properly. A single-height pass produces a flat, papery result.
Lighting
Overcast daylight is ideal. Direct sun is fine but kills detail in shadows. Indoor with bright fluorescents is fine. Anything dim or with mixed colour temperatures (e.g., showroom halogen + window daylight) will work but might need a re-record for the marketing-grade result.
Pre-flight checklist
- Phone storage: 1 GB free
- Clean lens (you'll forget)
- 1080p, 30fps mode (4K is overkill, slows upload)
- Airplane mode if you're outdoors and want to dodge incoming calls
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