Oak Tree (Quercus rubra)

3D Model

Red Oak Tree Quercus rubra root flare and trunk located outside of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

This model is one in a series I created for a study I undertook at my firm to explore the potential applications of photogrammetry in our practice of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design. There is no pure tabula rasa in landscape architecture, and gathering acurate survey data is vital to the practice. Landscapes are inherently complex, and in the past, capturing their more irregular geometries, such as vegetation or rock outcroppings, has been limited. The current crop of open source and low-cost software for modeling and photogrammetry allows designers to capture these complexities with a high degree of accuracy on their own with as little as an iPhone and a Workstation. It’s a pretty cool time to be alive!