USING VIDEOGRAPHY, 3D PHOTOREALISTIC MODELS AND AN INEXPENSIVE DRONE TO HELP IMPROVE GEOSCIENCE RESEARCH AND EDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS

Geoscience education requires stimulating students’ imagination and enhancing their ability to describe natural features and phenomenon, at the same time that we help them build their interpretive experience and observational skills. These mental tools and approaches are hard for students to acquire in the traditional classroom experience, and we need to find new ways to help them. In addition to learning how to use words, drawings and still photographs to depict geological processes, it is also useful and increasingly easy to capture geoscientific concepts by making short films that intermix footage from drones, animations, 3D models (aerial photos-oriented), and interviews. Drone footage provides an aerial persoective and enhances spatial understandings especially when short clips were intermixed with interviews and animations. High-quality 3D models are very useful in this context for reviewing details and digitally capturing the geologically interesting study areas. High quality video footage can be collected with a relatively cheap drone ($1000 - $2000) and a GoPro camera, requiring less than 10 hours training. Making 3D models is more complicated. The most popular and economical way is utilizing open source mission planning apps to conduct the automatic fly and videoing by the drone, then employing photogrammetry software to build 3D models. The work is achievable with an affordable drone, but the georeferencing equipment and the high-performance processing software are expensive. Significant effort is required to develop a story and edit the video, including adding annotations and animations. We will present two short films, including UTD geoscience class studying a rockslide area along the I-35 highway in the Arbuckle Mountains of Oklahoma to demonstrate that composite videos using a modest proportion (20-30%) of drone footage and a 3D model intermixed with interviews and animations are great for telling a compelling geoscientific story.