DJI Modify 1.6 Sharpens Its 3D Modeling Toolkit

DJI just dropped version 1.6.0 of its Modify software, and the update targets the professionals who actually depend on drone-captured 3D data every day. Surveyors, construction crews, public safety agencies, and infrastructure inspectors all get meaningful workflow improvements in this release.

What Modify Does and Why It Matters

DJI Modify isn’t a household name, even among drone pilots. It’s an enterprise-grade 3D model editing tool designed to refine and clean up outputs from DJI Terra, the company’s mapping and photogrammetry software. Think of it as the post-production suite for drone-captured 3D meshes and point clouds.

The software launched in 2024 and has moved through several updates since then. It runs exclusively on Windows, requires at least 32 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA graphics card with compute capability 6.1 or higher, and operates on a network-based license that demands a constant internet connection. It only works with 3D visible light models built in DJI Terra v4.0.0 or later.

That’s a narrow lane, but for the professionals already inside DJI’s enterprise ecosystem, Modify fills a real gap. Before it existed, teams had to export their Terra models into third-party software for cleanup and editing. Modify keeps the entire workflow inside DJI’s own tools.

The 1.6 Feature Breakdown

The headline addition in v1.6.0 is the ability to switch between perspective and orthographic views when working with 3D mesh models. That sounds small, but orthographic projection removes the visual distortion that comes with standard perspective views.

For anyone measuring structures or terrain from a 3D model, this means more accurate spatial data without the bias that perspective introduces.

DJI also added tools for reducing triangle counts and texture sizes to specific ratios. In plain English, that means users can shrink massive 3D model files without starting from scratch.

Large-scale survey projects can produce files that choke collaboration platforms and slow down third-party software imports. Smaller files mean faster load times and easier sharing across teams.

On the customization side, users can now draw cubes directly within 3D models and export orthophotos from custom planes. Block merging across PLY, OBJ, and FBX formats is also new, which makes consolidating complex multi-block models into unified datasets much more practical.

Point Cloud and Performance Gains

The point cloud side of the update got its own set of improvements. Users can now merge multiple point clouds into a single file, switch between metric and imperial units, and import or export LAZ files. LAZ is a compressed format widely used in geospatial workflows, so native support removes a friction point that previously required external conversion tools.

Measurement markers now display more clearly, and a new option to invert point cloud selections makes targeted editing faster. These are quality-of-life improvements rather than flashy features, but they add up for professionals working through large datasets on deadline.

Performance optimizations round out the update. DJI says it improved the efficiency of mesh flattening, deletion, and texture editing, along with better coordinate system visualization.

The update also fixes a bug that caused rendering cracks when importing Terra models that lacked coordinate system data. That particular issue affected reliability for anyone moving models between Terra and Modify, so the fix matters.

It’s also worth flagging that v1.6.0 shipped alongside DJI Terra v5.2.0 and a brand-new companion tool called DJI Reality v1.0.0. Reality is a lightweight 3D model viewer that supports point clouds, meshes, and Gaussian splatting models, and it doesn’t require a separate license. Together, these three tools represent DJI’s push toward a complete end-to-end workflow from data capture through final presentation.

DroneXL’s Take

Strip away the press release language, and what you’ve got here is DJI steadily building the software side of its enterprise business while most of the industry is still arguing about hardware bans.

Every update to Modify makes it harder for competitors to offer a comparable end-to-end pipeline. You can fly a DJI Enterprise drone, process the data in Terra, clean it up in Modify, and now present it in Reality without ever leaving DJI’s ecosystem.

That kind of vertical integration is exactly what enterprise customers want. They don’t want to stitch together five different software packages from five different vendors to get from flight data to a deliverable report. DJI’s approach isn’t flashy, but it’s strategic. And it’s happening while American drone software companies are still playing catch-up on the hardware side.

The LAZ support and orthographic view additions are particularly telling. Those aren’t consumer features. They’re features that surveying firms and GIS professionals have been requesting, which means DJI is listening to the people who actually pay for this software.

If you’re in the mapping and modeling space and you’re not at least evaluating DJI’s software stack alongside Pix4D, Autodesk, and the rest, you’re leaving capability on the table.

Photo credit: DJI