Quickstart: Digitize Your Environment
Configure providers, submit capture jobs, monitor the 15-state pipeline, replay failures, mount Splats — the full setup in 6 steps, in under 25 minutes.
Configure Provider API Keys
| Provider | Best for | Modalities |
|---|---|---|
| **Luma** | High-quality scenes from images / video | image-set, video |
| **Matterport** | Real-estate room captures + dollhouse | image-set |
| **Polycam** | iPhone LiDAR + photogrammetry | lidar, image-set |
| **Scaniverse** | iPhone LiDAR room scans | lidar |
| **RealityCapture** | Pro-tier photogrammetry | image-set |
| **Pix4D** | Drone-mapped surveying | image-set (drone) |
| **DroneDeploy** | Construction-site drone mapping | image-set (drone) |
| **Meshy** | Fast text-to-3D, image-to-3D | text-prompt, single-image |
| **Tripo** | Game-ready topology | text-prompt, single-image |
| **Stability** | Texture + style generation | text-prompt, single-image |
| **Trellis** | Microsoft image-to-3D | single-image |
| **Rodin** | Hyper3D Rodin sculpted assets | text-prompt, single-image |
| **CSM** | Common Sense Machines image-to-3D | single-image |
| **Hunyuan** | Tencent Hunyuan3D | text-prompt, single-image |
| **Spline** | Designer-tool 3D assets | single-image |
| **Avaturn** | Photorealistic avatar capture | selfie |
| **Ready Player Me** | Stylized avatar generation | selfie |
Submit a Capture Job
| Modality | Input format | Best provider |
|---|---|---|
| **lidar** | `.zip` from iPhone LiDAR scan apps | Polycam, Scaniverse |
| **image-set** | 50-1000 photos (any camera / drone) | Luma, RealityCapture, Pix4D |
| **single-image** | One photo | Meshy, Tripo, Trellis, CSM, Hunyuan |
| **video** | Walk-through video file | Luma |
| **text-prompt** | Natural-language description | Meshy, Tripo, Rodin |
| **selfie** | Front-camera capture for avatar generation | Avaturn, Ready Player Me |
| **multi-view-turntable** | Turntable image series for product capture | Meshy, Stability |
Monitor the 15-State Pipeline
| State | What's happening | Terminal? |
|---|---|---|
| **pending** | Submitted, awaiting validation | |
| **validating** | Input format + quota + credentials check | |
| **rejected_input** | Validation failed — input rejected | yes |
| **submitting** | Forwarding to chosen provider | |
| **submitted** | Provider accepted the job | |
| **processing** | Provider running reconstruction | |
| **downloading** | Pulling result back from provider | |
| **uploading_to_assets** | Writing to tenant asset storage + transcoding | |
| **completed** | Asset ready for use in scenes / configurators | yes |
| **provider_failed** | Provider returned an error | |
| **retrying_provider** | Auto-failover to alternative provider in progress | |
| **timeout** | Provider exceeded the SLA wait window | |
| **cancelling** | Operator-initiated cancellation in flight | |
| **cancelled** | Cancellation completed | yes |
| **failed** | Terminal failure after retries exhausted | yes |
Recover from Provider Failures
When a provider returns an error or times out, the job moves through provider_failed and (if eligible) into retrying_provider for auto-failover. Manual replay surfaces jobs that exhausted retries and need operator decisioning.
Auto-failover (built in):
- On
provider_failed, the orchestrator considers the next-best provider for the same modality + quality tier and transitions toretrying_provider. - If the alternative completes successfully, the job lands in
completedwith provenance noting both providers tried. - If all eligible providers exhaust their attempts, the job transitions to
failed(terminal).
Manual recovery — Admin → Spatial → World Capture → Failed Jobs:
- Each row shows: original provider, failure reason, modality, and which alternatives are still eligible.
- Click Replay on the row.
- Choose a specific alternative provider, or accept the auto-recommended one.
- Aeion re-submits using the cached raw input — no re-upload from the client.
- The job starts a new state-machine pass from
submitting.
Cached raw inputs — original raw uploads stay in tenant-encrypted asset storage for the retention window so replays cost nothing extra. Configurable per tenant.
Mount Gaussian Splats in Scenes
| Format | When to use |
|---|---|
| **.glb** | Mesh-based (triangles); needed for collision, physics, CAD editing |
| **.gltf** | Same as .glb but uncompressed JSON |
| **.ksplat** | Compressed Gaussian Splat (browser-renderable, photorealistic) |
| **.splat** | Raw Gaussian Splat (larger file, before compression) |
| **.usdz** | Apple AR Quick Look format (iOS / iPadOS / visionOS) |
| **.fbx** | Legacy DCC pipeline compatibility (Maya, 3ds Max) |
| **.obj + .mtl** | Universal mesh format |
Apply Legal Hold + Auto-Privacy
When scans contain PII (people's faces, license plates, addresses), proactive privacy management is critical.
Auto-detection on processing:
- Face detection runs during processing pipeline
- License-plate detection on outdoor scans
- Address-number visibility checking
Action options per detected PII:
- Auto-blur — pixels in the rendered output replaced with blur
- Auto-segment + remove — mesh/splat regions containing PII deleted
- Flag-for-review — surface to your privacy team before publishing
- Allow — explicit consent recorded; PII intentionally preserved (e.g., portrait scan)
Legal hold workflow:
- A privacy claim or GDPR Article 17 request is filed
- The Sentinel module places a legal hold on the affected scan
- Splat / mesh is instantly un-published from all downstream modules + scenes
- Audit log preserved for compliance review
- Hold released only by named officer (typically your DPO)
Use cases:
- Construction site scans where worker faces appear → auto-blur faces, retain site structure
- Retail store scans where customers might be visible → review queue before publish
- Drone scans where neighboring properties might be captured → auto-segment-and-remove out-of-scope areas
Integration Recipes
Production → location scouts. Aeion Mobile App captures location scans on-set; auto-routes to World Capture; processed splats appear in the linked Production module as referenceable assets.
Construction → site BIM updates. Weekly drone flights ingested into World Capture, processed to mesh; auto-compared against the BIM model for change detection.
Real-estate listings. Matterport-quality walkthrough scans embedded in property listings via the Content + Commerce modules.
Sentinel → security perimeter. Continuous monitoring of physical infrastructure — periodic drone flights ingest into the security operations center.
Spatial → virtual sets. Captured environments become virtual sets for Cut's video production; LED-wall workflows use the splats as backdrops.
Commerce → 3D product configurators. Industrial-product scans become AR-previewable + WebXR-configurable through Aeion Pricing's 3D CPQ.
Troubleshooting
Job stuck in 'uploading' for >10 min. Network issue between Aeion + provider. Check provider's status page. If down, manually replay against another provider via DLQ.
Provider returning low-quality results. Different providers excel at different scenarios. Reflective surfaces (glass, water) → use Luma (strongest Gaussian Splat handling of the 17 providers). Indoor low-light → use LiDAR-capable providers. Fast-moving subjects → recapture with more controlled conditions.
Splat file too large for browser. Standard .ksplat compression typically keeps splats under 50MB. For very-detailed captures (entire museum), use the chunked-render mode that streams the splat incrementally.
iPhone LiDAR scan rejected. Common cause: too few frames captured. Standard requirement: 100+ frames covering the space. Recapture with slower camera motion + complete coverage.
Cost spiking unexpectedly. Some providers charge per-pixel-area of output. Set per-tenant budget caps under Settings → World Capture → Budget. Auto-pause if monthly spend exceeds threshold; alerts to admin.
DLQ replay failing repeatedly. All compatible providers may be experiencing issues, or the source data may be inherently un-processable (corrupted, insufficient overlap, etc.). Check the raw input via the asset viewer — verify it's recoverable. If not, the source must be recaptured.
Frequently Asked Questions
Aeion acts as the unified billing proxy. The engine tracks the precise cost of every scan API call in the cost ledger. You pay your unified Aeion invoice at the end of the month — no 17 vendor relationships to manage.
Mesh (`.glb`, `.obj`) = hard polygons (triangles). Required for collision detection, CAD editing, physics simulation. Gaussian Splat (`.ksplat`) = cloud of colored semi-transparent points. Exponentially more photorealistic for complex environments (trees, glass, reflections) but not easily editable.
Operators access the `/spatial/world-capture/legal-holds` dashboard. If a privacy claim or GDPR Article 17 request is filed, the Sentinel module places a legal hold on the asset, instantly un-publishing the Splat across all downstream modules while preserving audit logs.
Not today — all 17 supported providers are cloud APIs; there's no self-hosted/local provider mode yet. If you need in-house processing, run your own reconstruction pipeline outside Aeion and import the finished `.glb` / `.ksplat` output directly into the Spatial asset library.
Practical limits: photogrammetry up to 5000 images per job; LiDAR scans up to 2GB raw; video up to 30 minutes (4K). Beyond these limits, split the job into chunks + post-process the splats together.
Per-job preset config: low (4K textures, 50MB output), medium (8K textures, 150MB), high (16K textures, 500MB+). Choose based on use case — mobile AR uses low; museum-quality archive uses high.
Yes. Every output format (`.glb`, `.fbx`, `.obj`, `.usdz`) is industry-standard. Import into Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, Unreal, Unity. No vendor lock-in.
The provider adapter layer abstracts each provider's API. When a provider updates their API, Aeion updates the adapter centrally — no work for tenant operators. Backward-compatibility tested via the integration test suite before deploy.
LiDAR room scan: 10-30 min. Drone-mapped property: 1-2 hours. Image-set construction site: 2-6 hours. Text-to-3D (Meshy): 1-5 minutes. Highly dependent on provider load + scan complexity.
Aeion can use Matterport's API as one of 17 providers, or use alternatives that produce similar quality at lower cost (Luma, RealityCapture). Tenants choose based on cost / quality / commercial-licensing preferences.