Into NamaqualandEarly next month, almost the whole team will be off on our first real excursion!The location of choice, meant to be a fairly easy first trip, is the desert.Specifically, the Namaqualand area of the Northern Cape in South Africa the same location this HDRI was taken.We figured after our struggles with lush vegetation making difficult access to scannable objects and surfaces for the Little Falls project (more on that below), a desert would be a nice simple environment to learn from that would also give us lots of content.After planning the trip in more detail, however, things are a little more complicated The accommodation were staying in, the Goegap Nature Reserve, has no electricity or cell service, and much of the park is only accessible with a 44.Could we have chosen a better place to stay? Probably. But its too late now since all accommodation in the area is completely booked up. You see were visiting the Namaqualand area in precisely the most popular time of year early Spring when flowers may bloom among the desert landscape depending on your luck with the rains in the days prior.This was intentional of course, and the reason why we have to go now even while the Little Falls project is still unfinished. The chance of seeing something more than just dry sand and rocks only comes once a year, and we think it could add a lot of value to an asset pack like this.Besides, who doesnt like a bit of a challenge?Well be charging all our cameras and flashes with solar power, or using our cars as generators if need be. For communication, good old-fashioned radios will do.We expect this to be quite the little adventure, so well be making a behind-the-scenes video exclusively for our Patrons if youre interested in following along Little Falls ProgressThe Little Falls project has taken a bit of a back seat while we prepare for the desert and wrap up older projects, but I can share a few asset WIPs in the meantime:Hidden Alley SceneJames is making steady progress on the Hidden Alley scene using everyones assets.Much of the time that it takes to put together a scene like this stems from the idea that Poly Haven should be publishing assets, not wasting time making pretty pictures So were trying to turn as much of the scene as possible into useful assets rather than one-time props that look OK at a distance just for the sake of a render.Elinchrom Flash RigAlso known as Wall-E, weve reworked our scanning rig for the Elinchrom ELB 500 flash. The earlier prototype we made worked really well, so this is merely a structural upgrade to ensure it can survive the desert and be relied upon.Naturally, like our AR400 flash rig, this one was first designed in Blender:Well be sharing the files for this soon in a separate post once weve tested it and ironed out any issues.C-MonsterSpeaking of scanning rigs, weve made a large 3.2-meter C-frame with a rail for our Godox AR400 rig to slide along:While almost all our scanning work is done hand-held (or with a tripod), we have some plans to visit a wood shop and scan a dozen or so boards and veneers. Doing that in a reasonable time frame with minimal back pain requires some level of automation.This rig can be operated manually with string as pictured above, but we also intend to attach a stepper motor and a 3D printed rack and pinion to automate the one axis.Turntable WIPJandre has been working on an automated turntable for scanning small objects like rocks and food.While off-the-shelf turntables do exist, we decided to brew our own (open source) compact solution that can be adapted to other rigs (like the C-monster) and programmed to do anything we might need.The Scanning in the Void method is our bread and butter here. With a mini tripod to hold the turntable, this can all be done in the back of a car on location. This helps avoid the environmental impact of transporting scan specimens away from their original location to our home base.BlenderKit IntegrationOur HDRIs have been available on BlenderKit for a while now, but only in the last month or so have we also added our textures and 3D models to their library.This is achieved by a script, made originally by Vilem (one of the BlenderKit admins) and rewritten by Jandre.We still think our own Blender add-on is the most user-friendly way to get direct access to our assets in Blender, but if youre already a BlenderKit subscriber this is a good alternative.Photography WorkshopA huge portion of our work comes down to what I would call technical photography, where its important to understand how cameras and light work in order to capture the highest quality images for photoscanning.We spared some time one afternoon to drive around Joburg and share what we know, having a bit of fun experimenting with what our gear is capable of even outside of the usual scan settings.

Growing the TeamThanks to our Blender Add-on, we are able to grow the core team and in April we were joined by Jandre van Heerden!Jandre is working on all sorts of technical tasks and helping us improve and automate our processes. Youve probably seen some of his scans already!This brings our full-time team to 5 people Also joining the team this month were Odin and Pan:Theyre a little less productive when it comes to making 3D assets, but weve decided to keep them on for moral support.Hidden AlleyOur latest community project, the Hidden Alley, was again a great success! Voting has just begun to determine the prize order, while James is continuing work on the scene and asset uploads.Little FallsWere making good progress on the Little Falls project, starting to process some scans and making plans for more trips well need to capture others.The location we chose is a little inaccessible and challenging to capture good scans, so well be visiting a few other parks and hills to get gather some more content from similar biomes.Mountain PinesOur Mountain Pines project is also making great progress and is almost ready to share. Many of the assets are already online, and weve got just a few left to finish up before we can share the scene file.Smugglers Cove BacklogWe have a few environment scans that made it into the Smugglers Cove asset pack on the Unreal Marketplace that we havent yet shared on polyhaven.com, like the one above. This was mainly due to them requiring some more work to be usable in Blender, while in Unreal Nanite could practically render the pure scan.Rico is now finishing up these assets so we can share them with everyone Elinchrom Flash RigOne of the first things that Jandre and I worked on last month was a rig for our new Elinchrom ELB 500 flash.We already use a Godox AR400 which is great in most cases, but we found we needed something brighter with batteries (and temperature restrictions) that could last longer, in order to be able to do scans in broad daylight.The ELB 500 is great for this, though it requires a custom mounting solution to get it usable for mobile cross-polarized photogrammetry.We 3D printed most of this, designed around a simple cage we found locally. The design is not quite refined or generic enough for us to share here, Im expecting to make a few revisions once we use it a bit more in the field.Texture Color CalibrationWeve finally formalized and standardized our diffuse map color calibration workflow using Macbeth charts.This was always a confusing issue for all of us, core team and contractors alike, but weve stuck our heads together and come up with a reliable and simple method to ensure the consistency and accuracy of our future texture scans.UncalibratedCalibratedThe difference it makes can be quite dramatic, and I only wish we could go back in time and improve all of our past work as well.Were off the gridOr solar installation was completed a few weeks ago and its been great having electricity 24/7 again.The size of the system is just enough to keep the office going during overcast days, and even run a heater or two while the sun is out.As luck would have it, now we have to deal with water outages too! This will be the second one in as many weeks, only this time its planned to last for 5 days instead of only one. Depending on how things go in the future months, we may need to opt for a borehole as well, but well cross that bridge when we come to it.

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