Jane Hannah MacDonald III Lifeboat

I recorded the boat with several cameras rather than treating it as a single scan. Ground photographs, drone coverage, 360 imagery and video reference all gave me overlapping evidence from different heights, lenses and working distances.

I then processed the material through my own software pipeline, written to sort, align and prepare the capture data before reconstruction. The result is a high fidelity photogrammetry model that preserves the boat's current restoration state in measurable 3D detail.

I captured the state of the restoration in April 2026 using photogrammetry methods. I intend to capture it at various phases to monitor progress. You can view the model here in this viewer.

Use the slider to see the photogrammetry mesh on top of a photo of the lifeboat as a comparison. The mesh is accurate and removes the shadows.

An x-ray view through the boat - two hundred horizontal slices through the photogrammetry mesh, taken from below the keel rising up through the hull. Drag the slider for frame-by-frame inspection, or press play for a flythrough from bottom to top.

The slice data that drives the X-Ray viewer above can be composited into the classic three-view drawings used in shipbuilding: a plan (looking down), an elevation (the side profile), and a body plan (cross-sections at stations from bow to stern). Each line you can pick out here is the outline of one slice through the photogrammetry mesh; stacked, they recreate the waterlines, buttock lines and station lines a draughtsman would set out by hand, but generated directly from the measured hull.

Gaussian splatting is a newer way of reconstructing a scene from photographs, using many small translucent points instead of a conventional textured mesh; it can preserve soft light, reflections and context from the workshop, though the surrounding areas remain lower resolution and hazier than the main photogrammetry model.

A 3D record of the Jane Hannah MacDonald III as she is mid-restoration, alongside the film and stills from the day. If you'd like this kind of record of a vessel or a place, see the 3D & photogrammetry page, or get in touch below.