Comparative Analysis of Photogrammetric Software for 3D Building Modeling: A Case Study at TUT

There are many application areas of threedimensional (3D) modeling of buildings such as smart city initiatives, environmental and urban planning, infrastructure monitoring, among others. 3D modeling of buildings using drone photogrammetry has been widely accepted as cheaper, faster, and precise method than the expensive existing methods employ by builders and surveyors for measuring plots. Moreover, there are different commercial and open-source models available for processing drone captured images to produce buildings 3D modeling and photogrammetric results. This study is conducted for comparative analysis of AgiSoft Photoscan (Metashape) V 1.7.3, DJI Terra V 3.7.6 and PIX4DMapper (Pix4D) V 4.4.12 as commercial photogrammetric tools available for processing drone captured data of Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) buildings from perspectives of quality of reconstruction, time of computation, and ability of buildings detection on Digital Surface Models (DSMs). The DSM results generate by DJI Terra are more comprehensive than the ones generate by AgiSoft and Pix4D, making it the choice application for such task. The results of this paper can help 3D model users to have confidence in the reliability of the generated 3D models by comprehending the accuracy of the employed software. By evaluating the performance, accuracy, and efficiency of these software tools, the study provides insights into their respective strengths and limitations in producing reliable $3 D$ models for architectural and engineering applications. The findings contribute to the ongoing discourse on optimizing drone-based photogrammetry for building modeling, which is crucial for advancing smart city initiatives and other 4IR-driven projects.