Options Selection Guide

This guide helps you choose the most appropriate WebODM processing parameters based on your drone, survey characteristics, and expected outputs. Please note: this guide is not perfect; finding the right parameters is not always a deterministic process—more often than not, it is an art that transcends algorithms.

Step 1 - Hardware Analysis

Does your drone use a Global Shutter or a Rolling Shutter?

If you are using a consumer drone (DJI Mini, DJI Air, Mavic, etc.)

Recommended setting

rolling-shutter: true Why? Rolling shutter sensors introduce geometric distortion when images are captured while the drone is moving. Best practice For future surveys, if possible:
reduce the flight speed;
use Stop-and-Hover mode when taking photographs.

Step 2 - Survey Characteristics

Do the images include the sky or horizon?

If yes

Recommended setting

sky-removal: true

Benefits

Less reconstruction noise
Cleaner point cloud
Better mesh quality

For close-range object reconstruction

Use:

bg-removal

Step 3 - Surveyed Scene

Does the area contain vegetation or low-texture surfaces?

Examples:

forests
grasslands
agricultural fields
sand
snow

Recommended setting

min-num-features: 20000

Effect

increases the number of detectable feature points;
improves reconstruction robustness;
increases processing time.

Does the project include buildings or vertical structures?

Recommended settings

pc-quality: high

Benefits

More accurate orthophotos
Better reconstruction of vertical walls
Sharper building edges

Step 4 - Ground Sampling Distance (GSD)

Do you need to preserve the camera’s full native resolution?

When flying very low (GSD below approximately 2 cm), WebODM may automatically reduce the processing resolution. To disable this optimization:

ignore-gsd: true

Warning

This significantly increases:

RAM usage
Disk space
Processing time

Step 5 - Desired Output

Priority: Detailed 3D Mesh

Main parameter:

mesh-octree-depth

Recommended values:

Scenario	Value
Flat terrain	6–8
General purpose	11
Complex architecture	12

If increasing this value, also increase:

mesh-size

to avoid excessive mesh simplification.

Priority: Digital Terrain Model (DTM)

Enable:

dtm: true

Adjust these parameters:

Parameter	Recommendation
`smrf-slope`	0.1 for flat terrain, up to 1.2 for mountainous terrain
`smrf-threshold`	Minimum object height to remove

Priority: Fast Processing

Enable:

fast-orthophoto: true

Effect

Skips dense MVS reconstruction and generates the orthophoto directly from the sparse point cloud.

Priority: Very Fast Processing

When the main goal is to obtain a result as quickly as possible (for example during emergency response, rapid assessment, field verification, or preliminary analysis), apply the following optimizations.

Flight planning recommendations

The fastest processing starts with an optimized acquisition strategy:

Perform a planar nadir flight whenever possible.
Maintain a constant altitude above ground.
Use regular image spacing and consistent overlap.
Avoid unnecessary oblique images if a 2D orthophoto is the primary goal.
Avoid capturing large areas outside the survey boundary.
Use a slower and more stable flight path when using rolling shutter cameras.

Recommended WebODM settings

Use fast orthophoto generation

fast-orthophoto: true

Generates the orthophoto without performing the complete dense reconstruction phase.

Reduce image resolution during processing

resize-to: 2048

or a lower value depending on the required output quality.

Benefits:

significantly reduced processing time;
lower RAM consumption;
faster feature matching.

Disable unnecessary outputs

Generate only the products required for the task.

Avoid producing:

dense point cloud (the most important!)

fast-orthophoto: true

textured 3D mesh;

skip-3dmodel: true

(if unnecessary) DEM products.

dsm: false
dtm: false

report

skip-report:true

Example:

Emergency mapping → Orthophoto only
Preliminary inspection → Orthophoto + low-resolution DSM
Final survey → Full processing workflow

Reduce point cloud density

(only if you need the point cloud) Use:

pc-quality: low

pc-quality: medium

when a detailed 3D model is not required.

Benefits:

faster reconstruction;
lower disk usage.

Limit mesh generation

If a mesh is not required:

mesh: false

Avoiding mesh generation can save a significant amount of processing time.

Additional operational recommendations

For maximum speed:

Upload only the required images.
Remove blurred or duplicated images before processing.
Avoid images with large amounts of sky or irrelevant background.
Use an area-based workflow instead of processing very large datasets at once.
Split very large surveys into smaller independent blocks when possible.
Use local processing hardware with GPU acceleration when available.

Step 6 - Target Software

QGIS

Enable:

build-overviews: true

Note

Recent versions of ODX already generate Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs) if you use the --cog option, which already include internal overviews.

Blender

Enable:

texturing-single-material: true
gltf: true

Benefits

Easier import
Single texture material
Modern compressed 3D format

Cesium or Web Visualization

Enable:

3d-tiles: true

This generates optimized 3D Tiles suitable for web streaming.

Step 7 - Accuracy Verification

Are Ground Control Points (GCPs) available?

To obtain an independent accuracy assessment:

Select some control points as checkpoints.
Prefix their names with:

CHK-

Checkpoint observations:

do not influence the bundle adjustment;
are used exclusively to compute independent accuracy statistics in the Quality Report.

Quick Reference

Situation	Recommended Parameter
Consumer drone	`rolling-shutter: true`
RTK drone	`gps-accuracy`
RTK + GCP	`force-gps: true`
Images include sky	`sky-removal: true`
Dense vegetation	`min-num-features: 20000`
Better building edges	`pc-quality: high`
Very low GSD	`ignore-gsd: true`
Generate DTM	`dtm: true`
Fast orthophoto	`fast-orthophoto: true`
Blender export	`gltf: true`
Cesium export	`3d-tiles: true`
Accuracy validation	`CHK-` checkpoints