From Point Clouds to BIM: Award-Winning Visualization
Every year, the reality-capture industry produces remarkable technical work. But only a handful of projects manage to communicate both the complexity of the process and the character of the asset itself.
That’s exactly why we launched the first-ever NUBIGON Video of the Year Award: to celebrate the teams turning reality-capture deliverables into compelling visual stories.
And now, we’re excited to announce the winner.
🏆 NUBIGON Video of the Year 2025
Congratulations to Greypixel Geometrics and András István for taking home this year’s award.
Selected during a live community webinar hosted by Michal Gula, the project received the most votes among 17 submissions from 13 countries.
The winning video showcases the documentation and redevelopment planning of a historic heritage building in downtown Budapest, an architectural landmark that plays an important role in the city’s identity and preservation efforts.
10,000+ sqm (107,600+ sqft)
7 levels
Large-scale residential redevelopment
What makes the project stand out is not just the quality of the capture, but how effectively multiple technologies, deliverables, and visualization styles work together to communicate the full scope of the project.
Hybrid Capture, Unified Presentation
Modern reality-capture projects rarely rely on a single method anymore, especially on large and complex heritage sites. This project combines:
Terrestrial laser scanning for critical architectural details
Handheld SLAM scanning for fast interior coverage
Drone photogrammetry for roofs and inaccessible areas
For this project, Greypixel Geometrics used:
Leica C10 + Canon DSLR from more than 500 scan positions for key facade and exterior areas
Leica BLK360 for efficient interior capture
DJI Phantom 4 Pro for roof documentation and elevated geometry
What’s particularly effective is how these very different data sources ultimately converge into a single coherent visualization. Instead of emphasizing the differences between capture methods, the presentation focuses on continuity: one building, one digital representation, one navigable visual narrative.
That’s a major strength of hybrid workflows when presented correctly.
Grounding BIM Models in Reality
One of the most important aspects of scan-to-BIM is trust. A BIM model may contain highly valuable information, but stakeholders still need confidence that the modeled geometry accurately reflects real-world conditions. This project addresses that challenge exceptionally well by jointly rendering point clouds and BIM models in NUBIGON.
Rather than showing the model in isolation, the video repeatedly anchors the BIM deliverables directly against the captured conditions. The result is a much clearer understanding of:
Alignment quality
Modeling completeness
Spatial accuracy
Coverage consistency
Design intent versus existing conditions
The split-clip transitions are especially effective here.
As the clip animation moves through the structure, point clouds gradually reveal the fully modeled BIM environment beneath them. Instead of a hard cut between “scan” and “model,” the transition visually explains the relationship between both datasets.
For scan-to-BIM presentations, this is incredibly powerful because it turns the BIM model from an abstract deliverable into something visibly grounded in measured reality.
Using Display Modes to Communicate Both Detail and Scale
Another standout aspect of the video is its use of different NUBIGON rendering modes to communicate different qualities of the project.
Surface Display for Architectural Detail
Surface rendering highlights the richness of the facade, roof geometry, and ornamental architectural elements. It gives viewers a more intuitive understanding of materiality and shape while preserving the authenticity of the captured data. This is particularly important in heritage documentation, where subtle architectural details often define the asset's cultural value.
X-Ray Views for Scope and Complexity
Meanwhile, X-ray display modes completely change the perspective.
By exposing the building’s interior structure and spatial organization, the presentation shifts from detail to scale. Suddenly, viewers understand the complexity of documenting seven levels and more than 10,000 square meters of built space. The sheer scope of the redevelopment effort becomes much easier to appreciate.
Together, these display modes create a much more comprehensive understanding of the project than a single visualization style ever could.
From Capture to Final Presentation
The production pipeline behind the video reflects a highly coordinated hybrid workflow:
Registration in Leica Register 360
Refinement in CloudCompare
BIM modeling in GRAPHISOFT Archicad
Visualization and animation in NUBIGON
Final editing in DaVinci Resolve
The final result succeeds because it balances technical clarity with presentation quality.
Strong pacing, carefully selected transitions, display mode changes, and audio design all work together to shift the viewer’s attention away from raw specifications and toward the project's overall impression.
And ultimately, that’s what effective project communication is about.
Why This Matters
A tremendous amount of work goes into reality capture and scan-to-BIM projects, especially in heritage and redevelopment environments where documentation quality directly impacts future decisions. Too often, that effort remains hidden behind technical deliverables that non-specialists struggle to interpret.
Projects like this demonstrate how visualization can bridge that gap. They help clients, owners, architects, and stakeholders not only understand what was captured and modeled, but also appreciate the scale, quality, and sophistication behind the work itself.
We’re proud to see the NUBIGON community continue pushing that standard forward.
And to everyone who submitted a project this year: thank you for sharing your work with the broader reality-capture community and us.