Automating a “8-directions at each altitude” waypoint photo mission (desktop planner or workaround?)

[dorywe]

Hi all,


I’m trying to set up a very specific waypoint mission on a Mavic 3 and could use advice on whether this can be automated (ideally from a computer/desktop planner).

Goal

• At each altitude level, take photos facing N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW, so 8 headings per “floor.”
• Step every ~5 m in altitude for ~20 levels (so say from 20-120m), so the drone climbs and repeats the same 8 headings at each level.
• Camera tilt would stay the same across all shots at a given level. Yaw/heading is what needs to change shot-to-shot but to be consistent across each floor

What I know / tried

• I can do this in DJI Fly Waypoints by adding a bunch of points and manually setting the heading for each one, but that’s painfully slow.
• What I really want is a way to define one “floor” (the 8 headings) and then duplicate it automatically at multiple altitudes.
• Curious about CSV/KML import, mission “templating,” or copy-paste tool that preserves waypoint headings and just increments altitude would be perfect.

Questions

1. Is there any desktop mission planner or workflow that lets me build a pattern once, then clone it at many altitudes for the Mavic 3?
2. Does DJI Fly have any hidden shortcuts for copying a group of waypoints and adjusting only the altitude?
3. If third-party tools can do this, are there ones that currently support Mavic 3 well with precise heading per waypoint and repeatable cloning?
4. Alternatively, is there a scriptable format (CSV/JSON/KML) that Fly (or another app) accepts where I can generate the mission programmatically?

Setup

• Drone: Mavic 3
• Controller: RC-N1
• App/Firmware: Up to date
• Shooting mode: Photos (not video, but including JPG+RAW), fixed gimbal pitch, variable yaw per shot

If anyone has a template mission, example file, or a step-by-step for cloning a “floor” across altitudes, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks so much!

 

[GadgetGuy]

Why not just manually shoot an automated normal spherical 360° pano at each "floor level" as you ascend straight up, every 5m? Will take far less time than trying to fully automate something via GPS that will never have the same accuracy.

 

[dorywe]

Thank you for your reply, I appreciate it. The issue is that the client specifically wants eight fixed compass views with a perfectly level horizon. A standard 360° spherical pano aims slightly up and down, which makes it tricky to guarantee a true-horizon frame at each heading.

I also considered doing paired 180° panos, but those require stitching and would lengthen the shoot. The client wants all 20 altitude levels captured quickly (ideally in under 30 minutes) so the sun angle stays consistent across the set.

I agree the 180° approach could give nice coverage, though. Do you happen to know if there’s a way to disable the in-camera stitching so the drone just saves the individual RAW images? That would speed things up and give me the files I really need.

Thank you very much for your time and best wishes,

Dory

 

[GadgetGuy]

Thank you for your reply, I appreciate it. The issue is that the client specifically wants eight fixed compass views with a perfectly level horizon. A standard 360° spherical pano aims slightly up and down, which makes it tricky to guarantee a true-horizon frame at each heading.

I also considered doing paired 180° panos, but those require stitching and would lengthen the shoot. The client wants all 20 altitude levels captured quickly (ideally in under 30 minutes) so the sun angle stays consistent across the set.

I agree the 180° approach could give nice coverage, though. Do you happen to know if there’s a way to disable the in-camera stitching so the drone just saves the individual RAW images? That would speed things up and give me the files I really need.

Thank you very much for your time and best wishes,

Dory

The 360° spherical pano (and the 180° pano option should, too) allows you to simultaneously save the original photos in either DNG or JPG, but that setting only appears while in the air and selecting Sphere and going into the Camera settings. Selecting save DNG precludes the in camera stitch. Selecting JPG allows it to also create the in camera stitch, as an immediate polaroid proof, while still allowing a much higher resolution manual stitch option later. However the HiRes 75MB in camera stitches from the 20MP originals is usually good enough with no manual stitching necessary.

A full 360° JPG shooting and stitching only takes 75 seconds while preserving the originals. 20 sets of every 5m would only take 25 minutes.

I haven’t verified that the gimbal elevation of 0° from horizontal is not among one of the three capture rows, but since the in camera stitch covers that 0° horizontal perspective, you could always crop it out of the in camera stitch, or create that perspective in a manual stitch of the saved DNG's.

What you are describing is actually the way we all manually shot our 360° panos originally. It is easy to use the Compass heading for the eight shots you want. Start at North as 12:00 for #1. Yaw to 1:30 which is 45° for #2, and then yaw to 3:00 for #3. Then 4:30, 6:00, 7:30, 9:00, and 10:30. Elevate 5m and repeat. Finding 45° shots is just halfway between the 12 and 3, 3 and 6, 6 and 9 and 9 and 12.

However, stitching two sets of back to back Automated 180° with DNG may be more effective. That shooting could eaily be done in less than 10 minutes, but would require manual stitching time later.

Let me know what finally works best for you.

 

[dorywe]

Thanks so much for your reply, it clears up a lot.

On my end (Mavic 3 + DJI Fly), the pano Format options I see are only JPG or JPG+DNG. I don’t get a DNG-only choice. Am I missing a menu, or is DNG-only pano capture firmware/controller dependent? If there’s a way to suppress the in-camera stitch while still saving all source frames, I’d love to use it.

The ~75 s 360° timing is faster than I expected, and cropping the horizon band could work. The wrinkle is the client doesn’t want stitched panos, so I’ll need to extract the individual frames myself, which is fine if I can keep the capture as lean as possible.

I just had two quick workflow questions for precision:

1. Exact heading readout: Might you know if there is a way in DJI Fly to show a numeric heading (e.g., 045°, 090°) live? The compass widget is great, but I’m trying to hit exact 45° increments across floors.
2. Hold a fixed heading while climbing: Is there any way (Fly setting, “Course Lock”/“Cruise Control,” or similar) to lock yaw at, say, 0° or 45° during a vertical climb, so I can do one heading at a time without micro-adjusting? I can try to potentially play with the controller's yaw sensitivity.

I really appreciate the insight and the step-by-step headings. This has already saved me a bunch of trial and error.

Thank you again for your time and best wishes,

Dory

 

[DJ Wes]

Is there any desktop mission planner or workflow that lets me build a pattern once, then clone it at many altitudes for the Mavic 3?

I have something that may help you achieve what you need. See my "Cardinal Directions Photo Mission Planner" at:

Litchi Mission Utilities

Web utilities used to design, convert, and create Litchi waypoint missions. Conversion to other popular waypoint formates are also provided.

www.litchiutilities.com

Even though my utilities are designed to work with Litchi, you do not need Litchi to use them.

This tool will help you create a single layer of photos. As you save each file, you can hit the "back" button and specify another height and save again. Once you have the desired number of layers (saved as CSV files), you can easily merge the CSV files into a single file. Lastly, you would convert the merged CSV file into a KMZ file for your Mavic 3 using another one of my utilities.

Any tweaks can be made directly to the CSV file using Excel. Give it a try and see if it gets you close to what you need.

 

[dorywe]

Dear DJ Wes, excellent, thank you for sharing this with me, I appreciate it!

In the meantime, I was also able to find a temporary solution within the DJI Waypoints mode. What I did was manually set the headings for one floor, ran that automation, then adjusted the altitude up a few meters between each run. That way, I had the same headings for each floor, but it required many small altitude tweaks which was a bit annoying. I also noticed the camera randomly took two photos at one waypoint and none at another on some runs, so I was just careful to watch that the photos were actually taken.

Setting a 1s hover with 2m/s global speed worked mostly well for this purpose, with those random skipping glitches becoming more common with other combinations.

Looking forward to try Litchi. Thank you very much for your time and help with this and best wishes,

Dory