Capture Cadence: Scan Spacing and Checks for the Giraffe360 Camera

Capture cadence is the rhythm of a Giraffe360 camera capture: place each scan where the camera can see the last one, at the spacing its mode needs, check that it has lined up, and finish one floor before moving to the next. Kept steady, it gives every scan a place among the others, and the floor plan, the virtual tour and the videos are all made from those placed scans.

Why Each Scan Leans on the One Before

The camera works out where each scan stands by tracking, and places it among the scans before it. That only works when the scans are connected: each one visible from the previous one, with no large gap between them. A sudden movement, a door opened or closed partway through, or furniture shifted between two scans breaks the chain, and so do too few scans.

A room that was skipped, or scanned in a way that processing has to leave out, can't be drawn on the floor plan: its dimensions and area are missing, and the property's total is calculated without it. Setting the camera where it can see its previous position, especially between rooms, is also what lets the virtual tour move smoothly from one panorama to the next. A missed room means going back to scan it.

Videos can't take that fix. Cinematic, drone and orbital videos built with Gaussian Splatting are created once, during processing, and their scans can't be added or removed afterwards, so a room left out on the day stays out of them.

Before the First Scan

The house is set once, at the start: getting the rooms ready means the main lights on, the doors decided and nothing moving until the last scan. Doors left open help the floor plan, since the camera then sees into the space around each room and the rooms line up better. A built-in closet that covers a whole wall needs two scans from the same spot, the first with its doors closed and the second with them open: the tour shows the first by default, and the open one gives the plan the closet's depth.

The other decision is the scan mode, and it depends on whether the project will include cinematic, drone or orbital videos. Pressing Scan opens Scan View, where you choose Single Scan or Double Scan. A single scan takes about 30 seconds and gives virtual tours, tour videos and floor plans. A double scan captures the room twice, from a top and a bottom height that the Auto-Height Tripod moves between by itself, takes about 60 seconds, and adds the Gaussian Splatting videos. The two can be mixed in one project, and the Help Centre suggests double scans in the main rooms the videos should show and single scans for the garage, the utility room or the garden.

Spacing Scans in Single and Double Mode

Single scans go every 3 to 5 metres (10 to 16 ft), one or two in each room, as near the middle of the room as you can. Double scans sit much closer, every 1.5 to 2 metres (5 to 6.5 ft) and closer still in tight spaces. In Double mode, take one from each corner of a room at about 50 cm from it, and zig-zag down hallways for full coverage.

In both modes, the camera never goes in a doorway, though an extra scan near a door in a bigger room tells processing how the rooms connect. It stands on level ground, not on furniture or a stair, with at least 1.6 m (5 ft 3 in) clear above the tripod base, and away from the walls. Rooms of odd shapes need more scans than square ones, because the laser reaches only what it can see from where it stands, much like a garden sprinkler. Corners shouldn't be hidden behind furniture, and with the curtains open where possible, the scan picks up each window's depth. Staircases get a scan at the top and one at the bottom.

There is a ceiling as well: projects of more than 60 scans may process more slowly, and one property above 100 scans counts as more than one billable project.

Checking Each Scan, Then Each Floor

Scan View shows each new scan on a live map of the floor, so its placement can be checked before you move on:

1. Press Scan, then Start Scan, and step out of the room while the camera captures it.
2. Leave the camera and tripod still until the scan is complete.
3. Look at where the scan has been placed on the map, against the walls and furniture around it.
4. If it sits in the wrong place, select the scan number, choose Realign Scan and move it into place with gesture controls. The Help Centre's ideal is within 0.3 m and 25 degrees.
5. If it has landed on the wrong floor, select the scan number and choose Change location.
6. Carry the camera upright to the next position, in a short and direct move.

Some places make tracking harder, and their scans need a closer look on the map. Large open spaces, outdoors included, can throw the automatic positioning, and so can mirrors, reflective surfaces and very small or empty rooms.

Capture one floor completely before the next, change the floor in the camera before carrying it up or down, and check that each scan sits on the right floor. Half-levels and sunken rooms belong to the floor around them, and in Double mode only full floors are scanned, not intermediate landings. Outdoor areas come last. Videos are generated floor by floor as well, and the finished video plays as one continuous sequence.

Reading the Cadence Back in the Capture Report

Once a supported project is processed, its Capture report tab looks back over the whole visit. It gives the number of scans and, when the report has them, the coverage and the time spent, and its floor plan colours the parts of rooms that weren't scanned red and the partly scanned parts yellow.

Under Improve data and scan quality, the suggestions are grouped by kind, and many concern spacing and order. For individual scans, the report can point out a scan without a connected scan, spacing that was too wide in a larger room, a camera too close to a wall or in a doorway, or one that moved while it was scanning. For the visit as a whole, it looks at floor changes, the order rooms were captured in and whether Scan View was used. Selecting a room or a scan highlights it on the floor plan, with the reason beside it.

The report also draws the route you walked, with any backtracking, revisited areas and switches between indoors and outdoors, and suggests a more efficient order; Show original path, where available, sets the route you walked beside the suggested one. Reading the report changes nothing in the project. It is meant for the next capture: after a few properties, the same suggestions coming back show which part of the rhythm slips. No capture report yet means the project has no report for now, not that it passed every check.