# Hexagon's Leica Geosystems unveils MANTIS, a camera-mounted solid-state LiDAR for 3D scene capture

- Published: 2026-11-13 18:29 UTC
- Section: Devices › Photo, video & audio
- Tags: MANTIS LiDAR, Hexagon MANTIS, camera-mounted LiDAR, time-of-flight LiDAR, VFX depth maps, matchmove, position pass, Unreal Engine Alembic, on-set 3D capture
- URL: https://realtech.media/news/rt-5e7b5d62586748badaeaedee_hexagon_s_leica/

**The time-of-flight unit rigs to any cinema camera and records depth and camera track during the take, timecode-synced, so VFX gets spatial data without a separate scan.**

![Hexagon's Leica Geosystems unveils MANTIS, a camera-mounted solid-state LiDAR for 3D scene capture](https://realtech.media/media/2026/11/41fa977136749b59.jpg)
*mantis.leica-geosystems.com*

Hexagon, through its Leica Geosystems division, announced MANTIS on 12 November 2026, a spatial recording system for film and television. According to mantis.leica-geosystems.com, it consists of a solid-state time-of-flight LiDAR that rigs to a cinema camera and records the scene in 3D while the camera rolls, plus MANTIS Studio software for post-production. [1]

VFX teams need 3D information about what happened on set, while the camera captures only a 2D image. MANTIS records the scene and the camera track in 3D during production, in one system: hardware on set, software in post. [1]

## Hardware on set

The unit is silent, works with any professional cinema camera and captures passively, so little changes on set. [1] It is synchronized with the camera by timecode, frame by frame. [1] According to the trade publication TechTimes, the sensor uses a VCSEL emitter and a SPAD receiver array with no moving parts.

The usual alternative, as TechTimes describes it, is a separate LiDAR scanner on a tripod operated between takes on an empty set. Chris Richter of Hexagon said MANTIS "significantly reduces the steps required" to composite VFX elements against captured footage, because the geometric relationship between camera and scene is measured directly.

## Data layers and formats

MANTIS Studio turns each take into four data layers aligned to the camera and lens: a point cloud, tracked cameras, depth maps and a position pass. [1] Every point is timecoded and aligned to the footage, and the user can work with one take, a time slice or several combined takes. [1]

Output goes to EXR, FBX, Alembic, PLY and E57 files, which export to the major VFX tools, including Unreal Engine. [1]

At launch the manufacturer lists 15 workflows that MANTIS data supports. They include camera tracking and matchmove, point-cloud and solve validation, depth-based roto and matte extraction, deep compositing, set extension, 2D-to-3D stereo conversion, synthetic depth of field, selective colour grading by depth, continuous set documentation and depth-model training data. [1]

Hexagon is holding four live demo sessions at The Clubhouse Studio in Santa Monica, where attendees can try MANTIS on a cinema camera. [1] The company has not published a list price; the product page states that pricing is available on request.

## Sources

1. [mantis.leica-geosystems.com](https://mantis.leica-geosystems.com)
2. [techtimes.com](https://www.techtimes.com/articles/330599/20261112/hexagon-mounts-lidar-cinema-camera-itself-kill-vfxs-costliest-bottleneck.htm)

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Source: RealTech, realtech.media — https://realtech.media/news/rt-5e7b5d62586748badaeaedee_hexagon_s_leica/