QGIS 3D: Reality Capture, Animation & More

Tag: animations

Our next QGIS 3D Crowdfunder with Lutra Consulting – QGIS 3D: Reality Capture, Animation & More

Three panels: a drone-captured Gaussian splat of a school, the QGIS animation editor with a camera path over mountains, and an Alpine village split between the CAD/BIM and Realistic scene presets. Title: QGIS 3D: Reality Capture, Animation & More.

At North Road, we are passionate supporters of all things spatial and open source. We love it when this gives us the chance to work with new and exciting technologies, and developing 3D functionality in QGIS is just that!

Side by side comparison of mesh (left) vs splats (right). Notice missing fine details of the pylon and cables in the mesh. Comparison from Cesium Sandcastle

We are partnering again with our brilliant friends at Lutra Consulting to develop some really neat features focusing on reality capture technology, improved 3D visuals, and upgrading animation support. And there’s more! We also plan to add atmospheric scattering to create more realistic looking 3D scenes and make life easier by adding in scene presets, close various gaps in the identify tool and adding support for gamepads for easier navigation.

A mountain landscape rendered at dawn, midday, dusk and twilight.
Atmosphere through the day: The modeled atmosphere follows the time of day: dawn (top left), midday (top right), dusk (bottom left) and twilight with the sun 5° below the horizon (bottom right).

Our financial goal to make this happen is €85 000 (about AUD $137,460). If you want to make a contribution please fill in the pledge form before the campaign is set to finish on December 7, 2026. The features will appear in QGIS in 2027 (versions 4.6, 4.8 and 4.10).

Visit the Official crowdfunding campaign page for the QGIS 3D: Reality Capture, Animation & More to read about the detailed proposal and deliverables.

About the project team

Company logos of Lutra and North Road
We are once again collaborating with our friends at Lutra Consulting, who are leading and organising this effort. We have worked together on many previous campaigns and complement each other in each of our specialist areas. Each company is highly respected and have proven track records in open source GIS.

Together, we’ve put forward a team of outstanding quality and complementary skills:

  • Lutra Consulting (based in the UK) has been contributing to QGIS for more than twenty years and are leading developers of the 3D support within QGIS
  • North Road (based in Australia) are one of the top contributors to QGIS development and have been responsible for thousands of QGIS features, with a particular focus on beautiful cartographic and analytical capabilities

How this crowdfunding campaign works

If you are new to crowdfunding campaigns, we welcome you! Crowdfunding is a viable model when there are passionate users wanting to support development of features they see a need for. End users (or end-user organisations) pledge an amount they are willing to provide to the campaign, and if the goal is reached, that pledge becomes binding. If the target amount has not been reached then there will be no requirement to pay the pledged amount.

Here are the steps to pledge to the campaign:

  1. You pledge the amount on the form – minimum €200 (~AUD$322) – see below “Why a minimum €200?”
  2. On December 7th, if we have reached our goal of €85 000, your pledge becomes binding and we will send you a payment link.
  3. Once you have paid, you will receive a receipt (and our thanks).
  4. We will then start developing the features for inclusion into QGIS in 2027 (versions 4.6, 4.8 and 4.10).

Why a minimum €200?

Running a crowdfunding campaign is not just gloriously developing features – there is also a lot of administration and project management costs involved. We want to keep these costs down and devote as much of the funds as possible to the development work. Want to pledge less than €200? Reach out to your local QGIS User Group or your OSGeo Local Chapter group – they can help combine smaller community contributions to meet the minimum target together.

Timeline

The campaign to pledge funds is set to finish on December 7, 2026. Work will commence when the target for our crowdfunding campaign has been reached. We aim to deliver the promised features over QGIS releases in 2027 (versions 4.6, 4.8 and 4.10).

Learn More