Payload
Aerial LiDAR scanning
Aerial LiDAR scanning flies a laser scanner over a location and returns a measured point cloud of it.
It is a payload rather than an aircraft. The scanner is carried the same way a camera or a lighting array is, and the flight is planned around coverage instead of around a frame.
01Question
What is it used for?
Previz, set reconstruction, and virtual production reference.
A point cloud gives a department measured geometry of a location rather than photographs of it, so a move can be blocked and a build can be checked against the real thing before a unit travels. For set reconstruction it is the record of what was there, which matters most once the location is struck or changed.
For virtual production it is reference: the scan is what an environment is built against, so the geometry on the wall agrees with the geometry the second unit shot.
02Equipment
The sensor is sourced per project
AGL does not own a LiDAR sensor. It is sourced for the job.
Everything else on this site is owned equipment, which is the reason to say this plainly rather than let it be assumed. Sourcing puts a lead time in front of a scan that an owned payload does not have, and it means the specification is set per project rather than being a fixed property of the service.
03Booking
Start with the location
Send the location, the area to be covered, and what the point cloud has to feed.
Those three decide the sensor and the number of flights, and the sensor has to be sourced, so a scan wants more notice than a camera day. If the deliverable has to drop into an existing pipeline, say which one early.