We first got into spatial scans about two years ago when everything revolved around NeRFs and tools like Luma AI. At the time, we’d capture environments using our phones or even cinema cameras, making tons of passes just to make sure we got enough perspectives. The results were impressive for what the technology was, but they still lacked detail and had quite a bit of artifacting.
Fast forward to today and it’s a completely different world. We now have devices like XGRIDS’ new Portal Cam that captures Gaussian Splats with incredible fidelity. By combining LiDAR with multiple cameras, we can scan full environments in minutes and with a level of accuracy that’s hard to believe until you see it. On top of that, new tools now let you relight, modify, or even remove parts of a captured scene directly in Unreal Engine, giving creators more flexibility than ever before.
Over the past year, we’ve seen more and more clients leaning toward spatial scans instead of building entire environments in Unreal Engine. The reason is simple: realism. When you scan a real-world location, you capture every bit of natural imperfection, lighting nuance, and texture variation that’s tough to replicate digitally.
Restaurant brands are a great example. Instead of shutting down a location for a shoot, which can be expensive and disruptive, we can scan the space and bring it into the studio. Many restaurants aren’t ideal for filming anyway with tight spaces, limited lighting, and no studio amenities. Now, with spatial scans, you can shoot inside that same restaurant environment virtually while keeping all the control and comfort of a studio setup.
The same idea works for hard-to-access places like airport terminals or retail stores. You can send one person to scan the location, then do all the filming later in a controlled environment. For brands with locations around the world, that’s a huge advantage. You can capture each store once and shoot content for all of them without ever leaving the studio. It’s perfect for training videos, marketing, or product launches that need to stay consistent across multiple regions.
One of the biggest benefits of spatial scans is how easily they fit into virtual production workflows. We can take a scanned environment, bring it into Unreal Engine, and be shooting on an LED wall within hours. There’s no need for modeling or texturing, just pure real-world realism.
This has completely changed how we approach fast-turn productions. Instead of spending days building a digital environment, we can scan a real space, clean it up, and start shooting almost immediately. It keeps the authenticity of the real world while giving us all the creative control that comes with virtual production.
This hybrid approach, combining real-world capture with real-time rendering, has become a go-to for many of our clients. It gives them the best of both worlds: the photographic realism of a real environment and the flexibility of shooting in a virtual studio.
Spatial captures aren’t just useful for shooting. They’re also changing how we handle preproduction and location scouting. You can send someone out to scan a space, then share a link where anyone can explore it from a computer, phone, or even a VR headset. Directors, DPs, and designers can virtually walk through the location, block out shots, and plan lighting or set builds before ever stepping foot on site.
It’s a huge time saver and makes collaboration easier for teams that aren’t all in the same city or country.
Looking ahead, I think spatial scanning is going to play a big role not just in film and virtual production but also in how we document and preserve the world around us. On a personal level, I love the idea of using this tech to freeze moments in time—capturing my kids’ childhood home, a favorite place, or any meaningful location that we can revisit later in 3D.
Just like photos and videos capture moments, spatial scans capture spaces. They’re memories you can walk through. And as these tools keep evolving, I think we’ll see a world where creating a 3D scan is as simple and common as taking a picture on your phone.