In my previous post, https://smathermather.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/big-dmn-post-photogrammetrically-derived-point-clouds/, I briefly cover software for creating photogrammetrically derived point clouds.  I didn’t summarize, like this, but PDPCs can be created in three easy steps:

1. Structure from Motion for unordered image collections
2. Clustering Views for Multi-view Stereo
3. Multi-view stereo (dense point cloud reconstruction)

But, unfairly, I gloss over some of the complications of creating meaningful data from PDPC processing. Truth told, it’s probably a 9 step process

1. Optimize image order according to geography to optimize step 2
2. Structure from Motion
3. Clustering Views for Multi-view Stereo
4. Multi-view stereo
5. Georeference
6. Create breaklines or disparity mapping or find some other process for refining our surface model
7. Generate surface model (mesh)
8. Texture mesh
9. Render mesh as ortho