Tony

LiDAR & Photogrammetry VFX Location Scanning

SCANable provided LiDAR and high-resolution photogrammetry scanning for Tony, supporting the feature film’s visual effects team with accurate digital captures of practical filming locations.

Our Task

Our team captured key production locations using a combination of terrestrial LiDAR scanning and photogrammetry, creating highly accurate spatial reference of the real-world environments used during principal photography.

The resulting datasets provided the VFX team with detailed 3D geometry, point clouds, photographic reference, and dimensional information that could be used throughout post-production for:

• Camera tracking and matchmoving
• Environment reconstruction
• Set extensions
• CG integration
• Accurate scale and spatial reference
• VFX layout and previs reference
• Digital environment creation

Location Capture for VFX

Production locations can be difficult or impossible to revisit once photography has wrapped. Capturing those environments during production gives visual effects teams a permanent and measurable digital record of the set as it existed during filming.

SCANable combined LiDAR’s precise spatial measurement with the high-resolution surface detail of photogrammetry to document the locations used in Tony. This hybrid approach provides VFX artists with both the geometric accuracy required for tracking and reconstruction and the photographic detail necessary for understanding materials, surfaces, and environmental conditions.

Built for Post-Production

Our location scanning workflows are designed specifically around the requirements of feature-film VFX pipelines. Data is organized and processed so downstream teams can quickly access the spatial information they need without recreating a location from photographs alone.

For Tony, SCANable helped transform the film’s physical locations into detailed digital environments that could continue supporting the production long after the cameras left the set.

Measured geometry beats sculpted reference

An environment built from photographs is an interpretation. An environment built from a registered point cloud is a measurement.

The difference surfaces the moment a CG element has to sit inside the plate. Sculpted geometry looks plausible in isolation and drifts under a moving camera, because nothing in it was ever tied to a real dimension. Measured geometry holds, because the wall genuinely is that far from the lens.

That is the case for set and location scanning on a film that shoots in real places rather than on stage.

A dressed location is a temporary object

Period dressing exists for the length of the shoot. Signage comes down, vehicles leave, and the space reverts to whatever it was before the production arrived.

Scanning records that state — the dressed version, at true scale, in a real-world coordinate frame. Months later, when a shot needs an extension or a replacement element, the measured record is the only version of the location that still matches the plate.

From point cloud to render-ready environment

Raw scan data is not an asset. It is evidence.

Turning it into something a VFX vendor can work with means registration, scan cleanup, decimation, and retopology and UV layout matched to how the geometry will actually be used — dense where a camera gets close, light where it only needs to occlude or catch a shadow.

Our 3D scanning for film workflows are built around that hand-off, so environment data arrives correctly scaled, sensibly organized, and named to the production’s convention.

Services Provided

LiDAR / 3D Laser Scanning Location Photogrammetry VFX Environment Capture Point Cloud Generation Camera Tracking / Matchmove Support Set Extension Reference Digital Environment Reference

SCANable

SCANable provides advanced LiDAR, photogrammetry, aerial scanning, digital-double capture, and 3D imaging services for feature film and television VFX. Our teams capture production environments, sets, props, vehicles, and talent using workflows developed specifically for modern visual effects pipelines.

There is more feature-film capture work to look through, alongside the full service list.