What Is Agisoft Metashape?

Updated

Agisoft Metashape is a stand-alone photogrammetry software product that processes digital images and generates 3D spatial data. According to Agisoft, it is used in GIS applications, cultural heritage documentation, visual effects production, and indirect measurements of objects at various scales. If you have overlapping photos of a site or object and need a measurable 3D result rather than a visual model alone, Metashape is built for that task.

What Metashape Does

Metashape takes a set of digital images and runs photogrammetric processing to produce 3D spatial data. The company describes the output as suitable for GIS work, documentation, visual effects, and measurement — so the software is positioned both as a production tool and as a source of measurable geometry.

The official site organizes supporting material into three areas:

  • Showcase — featured Metashape videos
  • Features — an overview of Metashape capabilities
  • Knowledge base — documentation and guidance for using the software

A PDF presentation of Agisoft Metashape is also offered on the site for a structured overview.

Where It Fits in a Workflow

Because Metashape is stand-alone, it is not tied to a single capture device or host application. The practical input is a collection of digital images; the practical output is 3D spatial data you can carry into GIS, documentation, or visual effects work.

For example, a team documenting a heritage structure would capture overlapping photos, process them in Metashape, and use the resulting spatial data for records or measurements. The same logic applies to objects at other scales, since the site describes indirect measurement of objects of various scales rather than a single fixed use case.

Agisoft Cloud Alongside Metashape

Agisoft also offers Agisoft Cloud, described as an online platform for site inspection, annotation, and documentation. It is integrated with a cloud processing service intended for Metashape Professional users.

This matters if your work involves sharing inspections or annotations beyond the desktop software: the Cloud platform is the companion piece, and the cloud processing service is specifically tied to the Professional edition. If you only need local photogrammetric processing, the stand-alone product is the core tool.

Licensing and Purchase Paths

The Agisoft site lists several purchase-related entry points: Buy, Online Store, Resellers, and SaaS. These indicate that licensing can be arranged directly, through resellers, or as a SaaS option. The available material does not state prices or edition-by-edition terms, so check the licensing options and online store pages for current details before deciding.

Deciding Whether It Is the Right Tool

Metashape is a reasonable fit when:

  • Your source data is digital images and you need photogrammetric processing into 3D spatial data.
  • The result must serve GIS, cultural heritage documentation, visual effects, or measurement tasks.
  • You want a stand-alone application rather than a plugin inside another product.

It is worth looking further if you need collaborative site inspection and annotation, in which case Agisoft Cloud — with its Professional-tier cloud processing — is the relevant companion. To go deeper, start with the Features page and the Knowledge base on agisoft.com.